^OFCAUFOff^      ^OfCAUFOft^ 


V' 


^mNi«s//jL^    ^los* 


^^1  i(Ti 


=  .< 

O        wL 


-'ilijwvbur^ 


1:) 


'-^iyojiivDjo'^ 


rUKIVERS/^       ^lOSANCFlfj>.         ^OFCAlIFOfti^ 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
tUHRAi      in  2008  with  funding  from 
IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


^A/Ui 


'^^ojiw: 


Y.m'^w^' 


http://www.archive.org/details/atnewtheatreotheOOeato 


>toAavaani^ 


"^J^^UONVSOl^' 


%a3MMa-3VkV^ 


.XWEUNIVERy/^ 


^lOSANCElfx^ 


^lUBRARYQ^ 


^J^HOWSOl^       %a3AWft3UV^         "^^OJIIVJJO^ 


^.aoj!' 


\WEUNIVERS/A 


o 


^lOSANCElfj-^ 
o 


J  1    I  i-^  ^ 


117 


%JITVJJO^^       '-^.JOJilVDJO^ 


S^ 


^OFCAllFOfti^ 


iirti 


"""mmim^ 


^^HIBRARY- 

§  1  \r 


^WEUNIVER^//, 


AT   THE   NEW  THEATRE 
AND   OTHERS 


AT 

THE  NEW  THEATRE 
AND  OTHERS 

THE  AMERICAN  STAGE:  ITS  PROBLEMS 

AND  PERFORMANCES 

igo8-igio 

BY 

WALTER   PRICHARD    EATON 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  AMERICAN  STAGE  OF  TO-DAY,"  ETC. 


BOSTON 

SMALL,  MAYNARD  AND  COMPANY 
Publishers 


Copyright,  1910 
By  Small,  Maynard  and  Company 

(Incorporated) 


Entered  at  Stationers'   Hall 


THE    UNIVBRSITY    PRHSS,   CAMBRfDGE,    U.  S.  A. 


rOGE,    U. 


'PA 


To 

GEORGE   PIERCE   BAKER 

PROFESSOR    OF    DRAMATIC    LITERATURE    IN 
HARVARD   UNIVERSITY 

FOUNDER   IN    THAT   INSTITUTION   OF   A    PIONEER  COURSE 
FOR  THE  STUDY   OF   DRAMATIC   COMPOSITION 

KEEN   AND   CATHOLIC  CRITIC 

INSPIRING    LEADER    IN    THE    MOVEMENT    FOR    A    BETTER 

APPRECIATION   AMONG   EDUCATED   MEN   OF  THE 

ART  OF  THE  PRACTICAL  THEATRE 


WITH  one  or  two  exceptions,  the  papers 
in  this  volume  are  reprinted  from  various 
daily  or  monthly  journals,  though  with  frequent 
additions  and  alterations.  The  author  wishes 
to  thank  the  editors  of  "  The  Atlantic  Monthly," 
"Scribner's  Magazine,"  "The  American  Maga- 
zine," "  Munsey's  Magazine,"  and  "  The  Crafts- 
man" for  the  permission  they  have  accorded 
him.  His  thanks  are  especially  due  to  Mr. 
H.  T.  Parker,  Dramatic  Critic  of  "  The  Boston 
Transcript,"  and  Mr.  James  O'Donnell  Ben- 
nett, Dramatic  Critic  of  "  The  Chicago  Record- 
Herald,"  whose  columns  have  been  at  all  times 
generously  open  to  the  expression  of  his 
opinions,  and  without  whose  co-operation  this 
book  would  have  been  impossible. 


CONTENTS 


Introduction— The  Theatrical  Syndicate 

PART   I 
A  Year  at  the  New  Theatre  —  Summary 

"  Strife,"  a  Dramatic  Debate 

Mr.  Sheldon  Wrestles  and  is  Thrown  . 
*' Don"  AND  "Liz,  THE  Mother  "      .     .    .    . 

Salem  via  Scandinavia 

Bridegrooms  and  the  French  Revolution 
"Sister  Beatrice"  AND  "Brand"  .  .  .  . 
"The  Winter's  Tale"  without  Scenery  . 
"Beethoven— A  Dramatic  Biography"    . 


Page 
.      I 


13 

35 
40 

49 

58 
66 

73 
80 
86 


PART   II 

"The  Easiest  Way" 93 

Miss  Nethersole  as  Muckraker 99 

John  Drew  Goes  to  Bed 103 

Mr.  Thomas's  New  Birth 109 

"Israel"  and  the  Happy  Ending "6 

"Herod"  at  Last '24 

A  Tempest  in  a  Teapot '3° 

Mr.  Klein  Tackles  the  Courts i3S 


X  CONTENTS 

Page 

Booth  Tarkington,  Sophomore 140 

Miss  Barrymore  in  "Mid-Channel" 147 

Miss  Ckothers  Champions  her  Sex 155 

"Pillars  of  Society"  and  Mrs.  Fiske      ....  162 

"Little  Eyolf"  and  Nazimova •  168 

"Her  Husband's  Wife" 176 

The  Bad  Morals  of  Good  Plays 182 

Bare  Feet  and  Beethoven 202 

PART   III 

Some  Popular  Errors  in  the  Judgment  of  Acting  215 

Great  Acting  and  the  Modern  Drama     ....  232 

A  Plea  for  Operetta 244 

The  Dramatist  as  a  Man  of  Letters:  the  Case 

OF  Clyde  Fitch 258 

William  Winter  —  an  Appreciation 283 

Organizing  Audiences,  —  The  Drama    League  of 

America 302 

The  Cheap  Theatre  and  the  Young 319 

The  Unconceited  Dramatists'  Club 343 


AT   THE    NEW  THEATRE 
AND   OTHERS 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  THEATRICAL  SYNDICATE 

SINCE  the  autumn  of  1908,  when  a  num- 
ber of  dramatic  reviews  by  the  present 
writer,  covering  the  previous  season, 
were  collected  in  a  volume,  much  of  impor- 
tance has  happened  in  the  American  theatre. 
The  volume  here  put  forward  aims  to  collect 
in  more  permanent  form  the  record  of  some 
of  these  occurrences,  set  down  at  the  time  in 
newspapers  or  a  little  more  leisurely  in  maga- 
zines. Such  records,  obviously,  claim  no  lit- 
erary value;  they  do  not  aspire  to  the  dignity 
of  covers  and  a  title-page  on  that  ground ;  and 
the  author  trusts  that  they  will  not  be  con- 
demned on  that  ground.  But  what  plays  were 
produced  in  our  theatre  during  a  given  period, 
what  impressions  they  made  on  a  sympathetic 
spectator,  and  what  tendencies  were  at  work 
shaping  our  drama,  are  of  historic  value  to 
those  interested  in  the  practical  playhouse; 
and  a  record  of  them  is  worthy,  to  that  ex- 
tent, of  preservation.  Much  that  is  theoreti- 
cal is  issued  in  book  form  about  the  theatre, 


2  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

but  little  which  contains  a  reportcrial  impres- 
sion of  the  times  gets  beyond  the  daily  or  at 
most  the  monthly  publications.  The  present 
writer,  therefore,  puts  forward  his  book  un- 
blushingly  and  makes  no  promises  of  good 
behavior  in  the  future. 

During  the  seasons  of  1908-09  and  1909-10 
the  most  interesting  developments  in  the 
American  dramatic  world  have  been  the 
steady  rise  to  strength  of  an  opposition  to 
the  so-called  Theatrical  Syndicate  and  the 
opening  of  the  New  Theatre  in  New  York. 
The  New  Theatre  is  still,  after  one  season, 
an  experiment.  It  is  not  truly  an  endowed 
institution,  but  a  private  playhouse  depending 
for  its  support  on  the  continued  good  will  of 
its  wealthy  founders.  It  was  not  democratic 
in  its  inception  nor  planned  by  men  shrewdly 
versed  in  the  difficult  craft  of  the  theatre.  It 
has  labored  under  a  great  handicap.  Its 
future  usefulness,  if  not  its  very  existence, 
will  dei)end  u])on  how  well  those  at  its  head 
learn  the  lesson  of  experience.  But  its  field 
of  possible  achievement  is  mighty;  it  repre- 
sents a  significant  effort  to  place  the  drama 
in  this  country  upon  a  level  with  the  other 
arts,  above  the  truck  of  commerce.  The  rise 
of  an  opposition  to  the  Theatrical  Syndicate 
has  been,  in  a  different  way,  no  less  signifi- 
cant and,  so  far,  very  much  more  successful. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  3 

The  Theatrical  Syndicate,  as  it  is  popularly 
called,  an  organization  of  six  men  first 
banded  together  in  1895-96  to  control  all  the 
first-class  theatres  in  America,  for  almost 
fifteen  years  so  nearly  accomplished  this  in- 
iquitous purpose  that  practically  every  play 
producer  and  theatre  owner  in  the  country 
paid  to  these  piratical  gentlemen,  directly  or 
indirectly,  an  exorbitant  toll  for  his  "  book- 
ings," the  theatre  managers  everywhere  being 
further  reduced  to  the  status  of  janitors. 
They  no  longer  had  any  say  about  the  attrac- 
tions at  their  houses.  They  took,  willy-nilly, 
whatever  the  Syndicate  booking  agency  sent 
to  them.  Naturally,  it  became  impossible  for 
a  local  theatre  manager  to  maintain  a  personal 
standard  for  his  house.  The  past  decade  has 
seen  the  utter  decay  in  this  country  of  the 
theatre  with  a  standard,  where  subscribers 
could  come  from  week  to  week  sure  of  a  play 
worth  while.  As  the  past  decade  has  also  seen 
—  thanks  in  no  small  measure  to  the  methods 
of  the  Syndicate  —  a  decay  of  intelligent  news- 
paper criticism,  the  rule  of  the  Syndicate  has 
made  for  artistic  chaos. 

But  a  greater  evil  of  the  Syndicate  has  lain 
in  the  character  of  the  men  who  compose  it, 
or  are  its  close  allies.  However  sharp  their 
business  brains  may  be,  the  majority  of  them 
are   utterly  devoid  of  artistic   sensibility,   re- 


4i  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

finement  of  taste,  even  of  any  practical  skill 
in  stage  craft.  They  are  utterly  unfitted  to 
control  the  destinies  of  a  Fine  Art,  utterly 
unfitted  to  shoulder  the  responsibilities  of  in- 
fluencing the  thoughts,  the  tastes,  the  emotions 
of  a  vast  portion  of  the  public  —  for  the  man 
who  assumes  to  present  a  play  ceases  at  once 
to  be  merely  a  business  individual  and  becomes 
a  public  servant.  For  such  service  these  men 
are  ludicrously  incompetent.  The  most  intel- 
ligent and  the  most  respectable  of  their  num- 
ber, and  the  only  one  who  has  any  standing 
in  the  community  at  large,  has,  by  clever 
manipulation  of  the  physical  resources  of  the 
theatre,  more  or  less  "  cornered  "  the  English 
play  market.  He  has  thriven  largely  by  pre- 
senting in  America  replicas  of  productions 
made  for  him  in  London  by  such  authors  as 
Barrie,  Jones,  Pinero  and  Captain  Marshall. 
Personally,  however,  he  has  maintained  in 
those  productions  and  theatres  bearing  his 
name  a  seemly  standard  ;  he  has  done  little 
or  nothing  for  the  native  playwright,  but  he 
has  brought  to  us  many  excellent  foreign 
works,  and,  in  so  far,  he  has  performed  a 
useful  service.  But  his  good  name  must  al- 
ways suffer  from  the  company  he  has  kept, 
the  practices  his  strength  as  an  ally  has  made 
possible.  His  colleagues,  and  more  especially 
the  two  men  directly  in  charge  of  the  Syndi- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  5 

cate  booking  office,  have,  as  was  natural  and 
inevitable,  in  their  iron-clad  control  of  the 
theatres  of  America  given  the  first  favors  and 
the  choicest  routes  to  such  plays  as  promised 
the  largest  pecuniary  returns  to  them,  irre- 
spective of  merit;  and  in  their  own  productions 
they  have  reflected  their  low  personal  tastes 
and  artistic  capacities.  A  theatre  such  as  the 
HoUis  Street  in  Boston,  once  a  local  pride,  has 
been  debauched  by  the  infliction  from  the  cen- 
tral booking  office  in  New  York  of  cheap  and 
vulgar  "  shows,"  until  now  its  high  dramatic 
standard  is  a  thing  of  memory;  and  it  is  but 
one  of  many. 

Inasmuch  as  no  actor  or  producer  could  hope 
to  secure  a  profitable  tour  for  his  play  unless 
the  play  seemed  "  a  good  business  proposi- 
tion "  to  the  men  in  control  of  the  theatres 
(which  meant  too  often  unless  the  actor  or 
producer  would  surrender  his  artistic  ideals 
or  his  business  independence),  the  blight 
of  their  sordid  standards  and  dull  comprehen- 
sion was  over  our  entire  stage.  There  was  no 
thought,  no  understanding,  in  their  minds  of 
the  theatre  as  an  art  or  a  beneficent  influence. 
For  them  the  theatre  existed  solely  as  a  means 
of  pecuniary  profit.  The  true  artist's'  willing- 
ness to  make  sacrifices  for  his  ideal  was  beyond 
their  remotest  ken.  They  have  in  the  immedi- 
ate past  offered  some  of  the  vilest  and  most  sal- 


6  A8r    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

acious  farces  and  musical  comedies  in  some  of 
their  best  theatres,  while  persistently  discour- 
aging the  efforts  of  men  who  were  trying  to  do 
finer  but  less  immediately  profitable  things. 
Furthermore,  by  making  independence  and  com- 
petition impossible,  the  Theatrical  Syndicate 
has  in  the  past  decade,  beyond  any  shadow  of 
doubt,  retarded  the  advancement  of  dramatic 
art  in  America  by  reducing  the  output  of  real 
artists,  like  Mrs.  Fiske,  who  refused  to  yield 
to  their  tyrannical  demands,  by  stifling  the 
efforts  of  new  native  playwrights  whose  work, 
for  appreciation,  demanded  more  intelligent 
consideration  than  any  members  of  the  Syndi- 
cate could  give  it,  and  by  actually  keeping  out 
of  the  theatre  altogether  men  whose  decency 
revolted  at  such  conditions. 

All  this,  however,  has  now  been  radically 
changed.  The  thanks  of  the  public  are  due 
to  the  rival  firm  of  managers  who  have  fought 
for  "  the  open  door,"  and  conquered;  who  have 
said  that  every  theatre  should  enjoy  the  right 
to  book  what  plays  it  chooses,  irrespective  of 
faction,  and  made  their  words  good.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  raise  the  question  whether  these 
rival  managers  are  themselves  much  better 
equipped  than  their  opponents  with  artistic 
sensibilities  and  training  for  the  delicate  task 
of  selecting  and  mounting  plays.  They  have 
fought  for  a  principle,  —  the  principle  of  the 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  7 

open  door;  and  the  man  with  a  principle  al- 
ways commands  respect.  For  years  the  Syn- 
dicate, by  its  control  of  the  vast  majority  of 
theatres  through  the  country,  had  successfully 
said  to  the  actor  or  manager,  "  You  play  in 
our  theatres  and  at  our  terms,  or  you  don't 
play  at  all."  To  refuse  meant  to  starve.  To 
obey  meant  not  only  the  payment  of  a  heavy 
and  unjust  toll,  but  also  too  frequently  the 
surrender  of  artistic  ideals.  One  firm  of  man- 
agers, however,  refused,  and  they  fought  the 
Syndicate  by  the  erection  of  rival  theatres. 
During  the  past  two  years  they  have  acquired 
more  and  more  theatres,  and  more  and  more 
managers  have  been  coming  over  to  their 
camp.  In  May,  1910,  twelve  hundred  of  the 
"  one  night  stand  "  theatres  through  the  coun- 
try joined  forces  with  them,  declaring  that  they 
no  longer  would  agree  to  house  Syndicate  at- 
tractions only,  but  would  welcome  any  play 
from  any  manager,  without  a  booking  fee. 
This  was  the  final  blow  to  the  Syndicate's  mon- 
opoly. Because  there  are  at  present  so  many 
theatres  to  supply  with  attractions,  the  Ameri- 
can playright,  who  has  for  two  seasons  been 
coming  rapidly  into  his  own,  has  now  a  wider 
opportunity  for  a  hearing  than  ever  before. 
The  small  producer,  sure  that  if  one  camp  wnll 
not  welcome  his  play  the  other  will,  is  now 
practically  free  to  mount  what  he  pleases  in  the 


8  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

way  that  pleases  him.  Actors  may  now  follow 
the  lead  of  Mr.  Faversham,  taking  their  desti- 
nies into  their  own  hands,  where  they  properly 
belong.  Under  the  spur  of  free  competition 
and  independence  we  are  likely  to  see  in  the 
immediate  future  a  revolt  of  the  better  players 
from  the  tyranny  of  the  single  role,  and  the 
healthful  growth  of  repertoires.  We  are  likely 
to  see,  also,  with  the  breaking  up  of  the  Syndi- 
cate's monopoly  of  our  theatre  and  the  con- 
sequent opportunity  of  the  manager  to  arrange 
his  tour  to  suit  himself,  a  return  to  a  standard 
in  the  better  playhouses  through  the  country. 
Just  as  Mrs.  Fiske,  who  stood  out  for  her  inde- 
pendence at  great  sacrifice  through  the  entire 
period  of  the  Syndicate's  dominance,  is  now 
permitted  by  that  institution  to  play  in  their 
theatres  if  she  chooses,  or  in  rival  houses  if 
she  chooses  —  exactly  the  principle  she  was 
fighting  for  —  so  the  time  will  probably  come 
again  now  when  the  local  theatre  managers 
through  the  country  will  have  some  say  about 
their  season's  bookings;  and  those  who  possess 
pride  and  a  decent  sense  of  responsibihty  will 
not  be  forced  to  offer  their  patrons  Anna  Held 
or  "  The  Girl  from  Rector's "  when  they 
desire  to  maintain  a  playhouse  of  reputable 
standing. 

With  the  control  of  the  playhouses  of  the 
country  taken  by  healthful  competition  out  of 


AT   THE    NEW    THEATRE  9 

the  hands  of  a  small  group  of  vulgarians  and 
traders  in  New  York  and  placed  where  it 
belongs,  in  the  hands  of  theatrical  artists, 
whether  actors  and  actresses  or  men  who  com- 
bine business  management  with  an  artistic  con- 
science and  judgment  —  men  and  women  like 
Henry  Miller,  William  Faversham,  Mr.  Soth- 
ern  and  Miss  Marlowe,  Mrs.  Fiske,  Miss  Max- 
ine  Elliott  (who  owns  a  theatre  in  New  York), 
George  C.  Tyler,  Henry  W.  Savage,  Walter 
Hampden  and  Daniel  V.  Arthur,  —  to  name 
only  a  few  —  the  chances  for  vital  and  stimu- 
lating experiment  and  achievement  on  our 
stage  are  brighter  than  they  have  been  for 
more  than  a  decade.  The  men  who  will  have 
the  final  say  concerning  what  is  produced  on 
our  stage  will  not  be  a  small  group  of  money- 
grubbing  vulgarians  in  New  York,  but  the  real 
artists  of  the  theatre. 

Physically,  the  theatre  has  always  been  too 
often  in  the  hands  of  incompetent  men;  and 
latterly  in  America  it  has  been  predominantly 
so.  This  is  wrong.  It  should  be  controlled 
physically  by  men  capable  of  guiding  its  ar- 
tistic destinies  as  well  and  of  realizing  its  spirit- 
ual significance  and  power.  The  farther  its 
destinies  are  controlled  not  by  shop  keepers  and 
money  changers  but  by  the  actors  and  artists 
themselves,  the  better  and  more  ideally  it  will 
serve  the  community.     Not  the  mere  increase 


10  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

in  the  number  of  theatres  in  America  during 
the  past  few  seasons,  great  as  that  has  been,  not 
the  startHng  tendency  (save  in  the  case  of  the 
New  Theatre!)  to  build  tiny  playhouses  of 
drawing-room  size  and  intimacy,  like  Maxine 
Elliott's  Theatre  in  New  York,  not  even  the 
hopeful  number  of  new  native  dramas  treating 
thoughtfully  our  contemporary  life,  all  of  which 
have  been  frequently  emphasized  as  significant 
signs  of  the  times,  are  the  most  significant  signs 
of  the  times.  What  is  most  significant  is  the 
dawning  opportunity  for  independent  and  un- 
hampered efifort  by  the  true  artists  of  the 
theatre,  the  serious  actors  and  the  trained  and 
competent  managers.  These  are  the  men  and 
women  who  are  willing  to  sacrifice  to  the  ideal ; 
and  the  measure  of  their  sacrifice  is  the  meas- 
ure of  our  advance. 


Part  I 


A  YEAR  AT  THE  NEW  THEATRE  — 
SUMMARY 

THE  New  Theatre  has  seemed  to  many 
observers  not  unHke  the  New  Thought 
—  somewhat  vague  and  not  particu- 
larly new.  Just  what  artistic  advance  the 
theatre  intends  to  further  by  its  choice  of  plays 
is  not  much  clearer  at  the  conclusion  of  the  first 
season  than  it  was  at  the  beginning;  just  what 
the  theatre  stands  for  in  the  dramatic  world  is 
not  yet  definitely  outlined.  And,  in  its  physical 
proportions,  the  New  Theatre  is  a  reversion 
to  the  auditorium  of  a  half-century  and  more 
ago  —  it  is  at  least  fifty  years  behind  the  times ; 
while  in  its  scheme  of  highly  privileged  sup- 
port, its  utterly  undemocratic  horseshoe  of 
founders'  boxes  around  which  the  auditorium 
has  in  reality  been  built,  it  is  a  direct  product, 
almost  a  copy,  of  conditions  pertaining  to  that 
fashionable  and  exotic  pastime  of  the  very  well- 
to-do,  —  grand  opera.  In  these  important  re- 
spects, there  is  nothing  new  about  it. 

In  the  New  York  Evening  World  of  March 
28,  1908,  was  published  an  interview  with  the 
late   Heinrich   Conried,   then   director   of  the 


14,  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Metropolitan  Opera  House.  In  the  course  of 
this  interview  he  said,  **  I  have  been  chosen  to 
plan  the  New  Theatre  in  every  detail.  The 
architects  made  their  plans  in  accordance  with 
my  suggestions,  and  I  now  have  in  preparation 
the  plans  for  the  stage,  the  mechanical  arrange- 
ments necessary  for  the  proper  production  of 
plays."  And  he  further  stated  that  the  New 
Theatre,  though  it  was  not  supported  by  the 
government,  would  be  a  truly  "  national " 
theatre,  an  "  educational  "  institution.  Unfor- 
tunately, his  first  statement  was  correct  —  un- 
fortunately, because  Mr.  Conried's  entire 
dramatic  experience  in  America  had  been  con- 
fined to  his  German  playhouse,  and  later  to  the 
Metropolitan  Opera  House.  His  own  training 
as  an  actor  had  been  gained  in  the  old-fash- 
ioned Teutonic  plays  of  long  ago.  He  was 
ignorant  of  many  obvious  conditions  on  the 
modern  stage,  especially  the  English-speaking 
stage,  and,  furthermore,  he  was  ambitious  to 
continue  his  operatic  management,  so  profit- 
able to  him  in  many  ways.  Mr.  Conried  died, 
and  when  the  group  of  some  thirty  wealthy  men 
whom  he  had  gathered  together  as  founders  of 
the  New  Theatre,  each  subscribing  at  the  start 
$35,000,  summoned  Granville  Barker  from 
England  to  consider  the  post  of  director,  Mr. 
Barker  found  an  auditorium,  already  nearing 
completion,  which  w^as  so  vast  and  so  badly 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  15 

constructed  for  the  performance  of  modern 
drama  that  he  took  one  look  and  went  back  to 
London. 

X  The  auditorium  was  designed  by  the  archi- 
tects on  its  present  scale  not  only  to  meet  the 
needs  of  opera  (since  opera  cannot  be  profit- 
ably presented  without  large  audiences),  but 
also  to  make  prominent  display  of  a  horse- 
shoe of  twenty-three  founders'  boxes.  The 
founders  of  the  New  Theatre  are  chiefly  men 
financially  interested  in  the  Metropolitan 
Opera  House  and  pillars  of  its  social  prestige. 
Their  idea,  and  presumably  the  idea  of  their 
wives,  —  whose  influence  cannot  be  left  out 
of  the  reckoning,  —  was  to  duplicate  at  the 
New  Theatre  operatic  conditions,  "  to  drama- 
tize the  diamond  horseshoe,"  as  Henry  Miller 
puts  it.  Now,  quite  aside  from  the  utterly 
undemocratic  nature  of  such  a  social  display 
in  a  playhouse  loftily  announced  as  "  na- 
tional "  in  scope  and  "  educational  "  in  inten- 
tion, this  horseshoe  of  boxes,  ranged  at  the 
rear  of  the  orchestra-chairs,  threw  the  whole 
scheme  of  the  auditorium  out  of  scale  for  a 
theatre.  In  order  to  make  the  occupants  of 
the  boxes  prominently  visible,  the  balconies 
could  not  be  swung  forward  over  the  orchestra 
floor.  The  first  row  of  the  balconies  is  no 
nearer  the  stage  than  this  row  of  boxes,  and 
the  last  row  of  the  third,  and  highest,  balcony^ 


16  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

is  thus  distant  from  the  stage  almost  double 
the  depth  of  the  large  orchestra  pit,  besides 
being  raised  an  enormous  distance  in  air. 
Over  this  orchestra  pit  yawns  a  mighty  void, 
wherein  the  voices  of  the  actors  wander  ten- 
tative and  dim.  From  the  balcony  not  only 
is  it  a  strain  to  hear,  but  the  stage  is  so  far 
off  that  it  seems  to  be  viewed  through  the 
wrong  end  of  an  opera-glass.  Any  intimacy 
with  the  play  and  players  is  utterly  out  of  the 
question.  Thus,  as  a  result  of  the  double 
blunder  in  the  original  scheme  of  the  New 
Theatre,  the  plan  to  mix  drama  and  opera  in 
the  same  house  and  the  plan  to  make  of  it  a 
social  diversion  for  the  wealthy  founders,  the 
theatre  has  started  on  its  career  under  a  well- 
nigh  insurmountable  handicap. 

It  would  seem  that  the  founders  and  their 
families,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  infrequency 
of  their  use  of  the  boxes,  recognize  this  fact 
The  truth  is  that  the  dramatic  performances 
at  the  New  Theatre  do  not  interest  them ;  and 
a  potent  cause  is  the  lack  of  intimacy  in  the 
auditorium,  for  which  they  themselves  are  to 
blame.  It  should  require  no  argument  to  con- 
vince anyone  at  all  familiar  with  the  stage  that 
the  modern  intimate  auditorium  is  an  integral 
part  of  the  modern  intimate  drama  and  act- 
ing; that  we  can  no  more  go  back  with  pleas- 
ure and  profit  to  the  old  vasty  spaces  where 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  17 

Forrest  thundered  than  we  can  go  back  to  the 
old  plays  which  gave  him  ammunition.  And 
it  should  require  no  argument  to  convince 
any  thoughtful  observer  that  men,  however 
wealthy,  prominent,  and  philanthropic,  when 
they  announce  that  they  are  going  to  build  a 
playhouse  for  the  public  good  and  the  uplift 
of  the  drama,  and  then,  for  the  exotic  pastime 
of  grand  opera  and  the  prominent  display  of 
their  own  persons,  erect  an  auditorium  utterly 
destructive  of  dramatic  illusion,  especially  in 
those  regions  where  the  poorer  classes  must 
sit,  need  not  be  surprised  if  the  public  does 
not  hail  them  unreservedly  as  benefactors  nor 
flock  to  their  theatre.  There  is  a  distinct  taint 
of  insincerity  and  snobbishness  in  the  New 
Theatre  which  has  perverted  its  physical  de- 
sign and  threatens  its  usefulness.  To  deny 
this,  or  to  try  to  disguise  it,  would  be,  to  put 
it  mildly,  a  waste  of  time. 

The  crying  need  of  the  New  Theatre  before 
another  season  begins,  then,  is  a  radical  alter- 
ation of  the  auditorium,  which  of  course  means, 
first,  the  abolition  of  the  incongruous  grand 
opera.  Fortunately,  the  abolition  of  opera  is 
certain,  and  some  consequent  changes  will  be 
made  in  the  auditorium,  looking  toward  a  re- 
duction of  its  size.  The  founders  of  the  the- 
atre, who  are  its  absolute  owners  and  who  will 
bear  the  heavy  deficit,  have  a  right  to  their 


18  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

boxes,  and  neither  critic  nor  public  has  any 
voice  in  the  matter.  But  possibly  a  lessening 
of  the  deficit  might  atone  to  some  extent  for 
the  loss  of  the  boxes;  and  possibly,  too,  the 
greater  usefulness  of  the  theatre  to  the  public, 
the  greater  vividness  and  interest  of  its  pro- 
ductions, might  act  as  compensation,  if  the 
founders  are  sincere  in  their  expressed  desire 
to  serve  the  stage  in  America.  By  alternate 
occupancy  a  lesser  number  of  boxes  ranged 
(no  less  prominently!)  to  right  and  left  of  the 
proscenium,  as  in  an  ordinary  theatre,  might 
conceivably  suffice.  Then  the  balconies  could 
be  swung  forward,  the  top  balcony  —  at  present 
a  pocket  to  catch  and  deaden  sound  —  elimi- 
nated, and  the  too-high  ceiling  lowered.  If 
some  of  the  overload  of  ostentatious  decora- 
tion were  lost  in  the  process,  so  much  the 
better.  Thus  arranged  for  greater  intimacy, 
the  house  would  hold  enough  people  —  say  six- 
teen hundred  —  for  probably  profitable  opera- 
tion, with  eight  performances  a  week,  if  it 
was  kept  reasonably  full.  As  originally  con- 
structed it  seats  twenty-three  hundred  people, 
at  least  half  of  them  farther  from  the  stage 
than  the  rear  of  the  orchestra  pit.  Certainly 
the  gain  in  intimacy,  vividness,  and  enjoyment 
of  the  play  would  be  incalculable.  Until  some- 
thing of  the  sort  is  done  the  New  Theatre  will 
remain  an  opulent  semi-failure,  be  the  company 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  19 

never  so  fine  and  the  plays  presented  never  so 

worthy. 

But  the  New  Theatre  in  its  opening  season 
has  at  least  demonstrated  anew  the  value  and 
possibilities  of  the  stock  company,  playing  in 
repertoire.  There  have  been  errors  in  casting, 
and  an  unfortunate  disposition  has  been  shown 
to  engage  stars  instead  of  standing  bravely  out 
for  the  resident-stock-company  idea.  The  en- 
gagement of  Mr.  Sothern  and  Miss  Marlowe 
was  ill  advised,  for  example,  as  was  that  of 
Miss  Annie  Russell.  A  stock  company's  first 
duty  is  to  develop  its  own  members  to  play 
adequately  all  leading  roles.  In  the  classic  re- 
vivals, no  less  here  than  on  the  commercial 
stage,  the  lack  of  adequate  training  in  our 
present-day  players  has  been  apparent  —  which 
is  further  proof  of  the  need  for  just  such  a 
company.  But,  especially  among  the  men  of 
the  company,  many  players  have  given  strik- 
ing proof  of  the  value  to  the  actor  of  fre- 
quently varied  impersonations,  and  the  public 
has  watched  their  growth  with  steadily  in- 
creasing interest.  Even  two  such  recognized 
artists  as  Ferdinand  Gottschalk  and  Albert 
Bruning  have  for  the  first  time  been  able  to 
show  to  the  public  the  full  ripeness  and  re- 
sources of  their  art.  And,  in  modern  plays 
(like  "Don"  and  ''Strife")  the  New  The- 
atre, in  its  first  season,  has  increased  the  public 


20  AT    THE    NEW    THEATKE 

appreciation  of  ensemble  acting,  demonstrated 
vividly  its  superiority  over  a  "  one  man " 
performance. 

In  his  "  Life  and  Art  of  Richard  Mans- 
field," William  Winter  quotes  a  letter  from 
that  actor  to  him,  dated  1905,  which  contains 
these  words:  "The  actors  themselves  are  all 
only  too  glad  to  get  a  good  salary  and  study 
only  one  part  a  season,  and  this  they  can  do, 
with  Mr.  Frohman  and  others.  I  stand  quite 
alone,  for  both  the  Frohmans  and  other  man- 
agers, and  all  the  actors,  are  against  me."  If 
Mansfield  suffered  fKom  what  Shaw  calls  "  the 
solitary  despotism  of  his  own  temperament," 
if  that  was  what  killed  him,  it  was  also  what 
made  him  great,  fed  the  flame  of  his  ambition 
and  his  genius.  The  endowed  stock  company 
can  seldom  breed,  and  probably  almost  never 
keep,  a  dramatic  genius  like  Mansfield,  —  that 
is,  a  man  who,  as  actor,  flames  triumphantly 
and,  as  producer,  shapes  the  entire  perform- 
ance. If  a  stock  company  did  not  stifle  such 
a  genius  he  would  disrupt  the  stock  company. 
But  in  one  winter  the  New  Theatre  has  shown 
that  it  can  recruit  a  company  of  intelligent 
artists,  both  young  and  old,  who  are  cheer- 
fully wilhng,  nay,  eager,  to  learn  more  than 
one  part  a  season;  and  that,  under  this  spur 
and  with  this  opportunity,  many  of  them  de- 
velop and  ripen  in  their  art  with  encouraging 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  21 

rapidity.  In  spite  of  the  lack  of  training  which 
has  hampered  it  in  presenting  the  classics,  the 
New  Theatre  company  is  already  a  potential 
force  in  the  dramatic  life  of  America.  It  is 
training  players  to  varied  impersonation,  and 
the  public  to  an  appreciation  of  impersonation 
rather  than  personality,  to  an  understanding 
of  acting  as  an  art. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  repertoire  of  the  first 
season. 

The  New  Theatre  opened  on  November  6, 
1909,  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  Winthrop 
Ames,  with  a  dress  rehearsal,  amounting  to  a 
public  performance,  of  Shakespeare's  "  Antony 
and  Cleopatra."  Although  the  prospectus  of 
the  house  shrewdly  pointed  out  the  evils  of  the 
star  system,  the  theatre  opened  with  a  star 
play,  if  ever  there  was  one,  and  engaged  for 
the  two  star  parts  Mr.  Sothern  and  Miss  Mar- 
lowe, "  for  a  limited  period."  Here  was  a  de- 
parture from  the  stock-company  idea  at  the 
very  start.  Furthermore,  not  only  are  Mr. 
Sothern  and  Miss  Marlowe  too  habituated  to 
the  star  system  to  work  genially  in  stock- 
company  harness,  but  they  are  manifestly  un- 
fitted for  the  roles  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra. 
Had  a  Shakespearian  play  been  chosen  for  the 
opening  bill  wherein  they  could  appear  to  ad- 
vantage, —  say  "  Twelfth  Night,"  —  at  least 
the   desolate   dullness  of   that   inaugural   per- 


22  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

formance  would  have  been  avoided.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  those  in  charge  of  the  New 
Theatre  did  not  have  the  courage  of  their 
convictions.  They  were  themselves  so  habit- 
uated to  the  popular  estimate  of  a  name  (and 
a  novelty)  that  they  called  in  two  prominent 
stars  and  chose  a  play  long  disused  to  give 
their  theatre  this  dubious  advantage,  in  defi- 
ance of  repertoire-company  idea. 

"  Antony  and  Cleopatra "  was  a  dismal 
failure.  Even  the  minor  parts  were  not  well 
played,  and  the  performance  dragged  slug- 
gishly. Gloom  rested  on  the  New  Theatre, 
and  it  was  not  visibly  dispelled  on  November 
II,  when  the  second  dramatic  production  was 
made,  of  a  light  fantastic  comedy  by  Edward 
Knoblauch,  called  "  The  Cottage  in  the  Air  " 
—  a  play  adapted  from  the  story,  "  The  Princess 
Priscilla's  Fortnight.  "  It  was  a  trifling  affair, 
not  so  well  written  as  a  comedy  of  similar  theme 
then  current  on  Broadway.  It  disclosed  no 
originality  of  fancy,  no  depth  of  feeling,  no  clev- 
erness of  dramatic  design.  It  was  of  a  conven- 
tionally romantic  type  long  familiar  on  our 
stage  through  much  better  examples.  The 
only  reasonable  excuse  the  directors  of  the 
New  Theatre  can  offer  for  staging  it  is  that 
they  had  nothing  else. 

Six  days  later,  however,  on  November  17, 
a  play  was  disclosed  of  ([uite  another  stamp  — 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  23 

John  Galsworthy's  "  Strife."  This  astonish- 
ingly gripping  dramatic  argument  was  staged 
with  careful  and  seemingly  artless  realism,  and 
acted  by  the  long  cast,  headed  by  Albert  Brun- 
ing  and  Louis  Calvert,  with  clearness,  force, 
and  emotional  sincerity.  "  Strife  "  tells  the 
story  of  a  factory  strike;  it  presents  by  turns 
the  laborers'  side  and  the  employers'  side;  it 
shows  the  fiery,  passionate  labor  leader  broken 
at  the  end,  and  the  stern  old  leader  of  the  capi- 
talists broken,  too.  It  does  not  spare  details 
of  the  suffering  of  the  mill-people,  nor  does  it 
fail  to  show  their  unreasonableness  and  vacil- 
lation. It  makes  out  a  case  for  each  side,  and 
then  solves  the  strike  by  arbitration  on  terms 
considered  by  both  sides  before  the  fight 
began.  In  this  ironic  conclusion  it  points  a 
silent  finger  toward  the  cooperative  common- 
wealth. "  Strife  "  is  a  powerful  and  thought- 
ful play,  written  in  a  restrained  but  truly  ner- 
vous style,  and  superbly  acted  by  the  New 
Theatre  company.  And  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
no  American  commercial  manager  would  have 
produced  it.  When  it  came  on,  the  friends  of 
the  New  Theatre  for  the  first  time  took  heart. 
On  December  4,  **  The  Nigger  "  was  pro- 
duced, the  second  play  written  by  an  American 
author  but  the  first  to  treat  of  American  sub- 
jects. The  author  is  Edward  Sheldon,  who 
recently  emerged  from  Harvard  College  with 


2i  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

"  Salvation  Nell  ''  and  sold  it  to  Mrs.  Fiske. 
This  youthful  dramatist  has  the  courage  of 
large  themes.  In  ''  The  Nigger  "  he  plunged 
boldly  across  the  Mason  and  Dixon  line  and 
endeavored  to  set  forth  the  tragedy  of  a  high- 
spirited  and  high-minded  Southerner  —  the 
governor  of  a  state  —  who  finds  suddenly  that 
his  blood  is  tainted  by  ancestral  miscengena- 
tion,  and  renounces  (perforce!)  all  he  has  held 
most  dear  to  go  down  and  labor  among  his 
black  kind.  Here,  unquestionably,  is  a  big, 
vital  theme,  however  unpleasant  to  some  pal- 
ates. Rut  Mr.  Sheldon  has  as  yet  neither  the 
maturity  of  mind  and  heart  to  present  it  ade- 
quately nor  the  technical  facility  to  weave  it 
into  a  convincing  narrative.  His  play,  at  first 
raw  with  the  bravado  of  extreme  youth  defy- 
ing artistic  restraint,  is  later  discursive  and 
dull.  Nor  was  it  acted  with  any  distinction. 
But  it  was  an  honest  attempt  at  significant 
native  drama,  and  worth  doing. 

Next  of  the  dramatic  productions  was  a 
second  classic,  *'  The  School  for  Scandal," 
made  on  December  i6.  In  spite  of  the  inade- 
quacy of  its  representation,  it  has  proved  the 
most  popular  play  in  the  repertoire,  thanks  to 
its  immortal  charm.  A  company  that  in 
''Strife"  played  exquisitely  in  one  key  —  the 
key  of  realism  —  here  played  in  almost  as 
many  keys  as  there  are  characters.     Mr.  Cor- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  25 

bin,  the  literary  director  during  the  first 
season,  has  written  that  Mr.  Calvert,  the 
producer  and  exponent  of  Sir  Peter,  "  made 
it  his  artistic  aim  to  play  for  the  reality 
and  essential  humor  of  the  comedy.  .  .  . 
Sir  Peter  became  a  warm-hearted  old  fel- 
low, sorely  tried  and  often  vexed,  to  be  sure, 
but  above  all  a  gentleman,  and  deeply  in  love 
with  his  madcap  wife."  But  "  the  essential 
humor  of  the  comedy  "  was  just  what  was  lost. 
It  was  a  comparatively  mirthless  performance, 
without  sparkle,  because  half  of  the  company 
tried  evidently  for  a  modern  key  of  realism 
and  missed  their  "  points."  Does  Mr.  Corbin 
fancy  the  deep-hearted  Sir  Peter  of  William 
Warren  was  less  of  a  gentleman,  or  less  in 
love  with  his  wife,  than  this  toned-down  and 
colorless  Sir  Peter  of  Mr.  Calvert?  Hardly! 
If  you  are  going  to  play  Sheridan,  play 
Sheridan.  And  to  play  Sheridan  with  a  mod- 
ern company,  we  should  perhaps  bear  in  mind, 
requires,  after  all,  some  heart-breaking  experi- 
ment and  training. 

Then,  on  December  30,  came  a  one-act  play, 
called  "  Liz,  the  Mother  "  (over  which  we  will 
hastily  draw  the  veil  of  silence;  it  slumbers 
now  in  the  storehouse,  after  the  single  per- 
formance), and  Rudolph  Besier's  ''Don." 
This  last  is  a  comedy,  produced  with  success 
in  England,  setting  forth  with  sufficient  plausi- 


26  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

bility  for  comedy  purposes,  and  with  much 
humorous  irony,  the  adventures  of  a  young 
ideahstic  philanthropist  —  a  sort  of  modern 
Shelley,  plus  propriety  —  who  tries  to  take  an 
unhappy  wife  away  from  her  husband  and 
bring  her  to  his  parents'  house.  His  father  is 
a  conventional  Canon  of  the  church,  his  mother 
a  conventional  Canon's  wife,  his  fiancee's  father 
a  conventional  army  officer,  and  the  pursuing 
husband  a  fanatic  member  of  the  Plymouth 
Brethren.  Here,  surely,  are  the  materials  for 
ironic  comedy.  The  young  philanthropist 
emerges  wiser,  if  no  less  philanthropic;  the 
Plymouth  Brother  takes  his  wife  back,  to  treat 
her  to  less  religion  and  more  love;  and  the 
boy's  mother  does  not  understand  anything 
that  has  happened.  The  piece  was  almost 
faultlessly  acted,  with  a  gay  dash,  clean-cut 
characterization,  and  abundant  feeling.  It  was 
perilously  near  farce,  yet  with  intellectual  tang 
and  real  point.  It  was  distinctly  worth  doing. 
Next,  on  January  26,  1910,  the  third  classic 
was  produced,  "  Twelfth  Night."  It  had  an 
unimpressive  performance.  The  roistering 
scenes,  to  be  sure,  were  amusing,  though  Sir 
Toby  and  Sir  Andrew  rather  rioted  to  rule. 
But  Miss  Annie  Russell  was  utterly  inadequate 
as  Viola,  and  the  Malvolio  was  no  better. 
When  Viola  is  neither  romantic  nor  gay-spir- 
ited  and   Malvolio   neither   comic   or   tragic, 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  27 

"Twelfth  Night"  is  hardly  brought  to  life. 
Miss  Marlowe  and  Mr.  Sothern  had  left  the 
company,  but  Miss  Matthison  had  joined  it. 
The  play  was  inexcusably  miscast,  and  its 
charm  was  lost. 

On  February  14  ''The  Witch"  was  pro- 
duced—  a  play  adapted  by  Hermann  Hage- 
dorn  from  the  Scandinavian  of  H.  Wiers- 
Jenssen.  It  proved  gloomy,  unreal,  stilted, 
theatrical,  and  was  so  acted.  Mr.  Hagedorn 
shifted  the  scene  from  ancient  Scandinavia  to 
the  Salem,  Massachusetts,  of  1692.  There  can 
be  little  excuse  for  this  sort  of  thing  at  such 
a  house  as  the  New  Theatre.  A  foreign  drama 
should  either  be  played  as  it  was  written  or 
not  at  all.  Adapt  an  alien  plot,  with  its  in- 
herent motives  and  characters,  to  an  American 
setting,  and  you  ruin  the  original  without 
producing  anything  genuinely  and  sincerely 
American.  "  The  Witch  "  as  it  came  to  the 
stage  of  the  New  Theatre  suggested  that 
Sardou  had  visited  Salem,  Massachusetts,  and 
fogged  his  melodramatic  fervor  in  the  gloom 
of  traditional  Puritanism.  The  Puritans  of 
*'  The  Witch "  were  unreal  beings,  spouting 
endless  streams  of  tiresome,  unreal  talk  in  a 
dreary  sing-song.  Actually,  the  Puritans  of 
witchcraft  days  were  deep-hearted,  religious 
zealots,  and  Cotton  Mather,  leader  against  the 
witches,  has  left  writings  of  a  beautiful  sim- 


28  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

plicity  and  eloquence.  Nor  does  the  motive  of 
illicit  love,  treated  not  in  the  deep  spiritual  key 
of  Hawthorne  but  in  the  key  of  Sardou,  make 
for  pleasure  or  profit  in  a  Puritan  drama. 
"  The  Witch  "  did  not  have  even  the  excuse 
of  sustained  theatrical  interest.  It  was  dull 
as  well  as  false. 

On  March  14  a  double  bill  was  presented,  — 
act  four  of  Ibsen's  ''Brand"  (condensed), 
and  IMaeterlinck's  "  Sister  Beatrice,"  a  moral- 
ity play  originally  written  as  a  libretto.  The 
plays  were  not  well  contrasted  for  one  even- 
ing's fare,  there  being  something  too  much  of 
severity  ;  and  "  Brand "  was  very  badly 
played,  into  the  bargain,  though  it  is  hard  to 
sympathize  w^ith  those  w'ho  find  this  fourth 
act  unintelligible  without  the  others.  "  Sister 
Beatrice,"  the  title  part  beautifully  acted  by 
Miss  Matthison,  was  mounted  in  an  exquisite 
setting,  one  of  the  most  exquisite  ever  shown 
on  a  New  York  stage.  The  play,  however, 
just  failed  of  its  true  effect  because  the  man- 
agement, ignoring  completely  the  author's  di- 
rections to  play  the  second  act  in  sunlight, 
played  the  entire  piece  in  a  night  gloom,  thus 
at  one  stroke  destroying  the  atmospheric  con- 
trast between  the  human  frailty  of  Beatrice 
and  the  joyous,  divine  forgiveness  of  the  Vir- 
gin, and  tinging  a  naive  legend,  essentially 
fresh,  with  artificial  solemnity. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  29 

On  March  28  ''The  Wmter's  Tale"  was 
revived,  on  a  stage  simply  dressed  in  the  Eliza- 
bethan manner.  The  presence  of  Miss  Mat- 
thison  in  the  cast  —  an  actress  admirably 
adapted  for  a  company  presenting  classic  and 
poetic  plays  —  and  the  interest  of  the  archaic 
setting  and  the  complete  and  coherent  text, 
combined  to  make  the  production  unusually 
worth  while,  and  certainly  as  "  educational  " 
as  Mr.  Conried  coul-d  have  desired.  Another 
production  had  been  promised,  of  Rene  Fau- 
chois's  "  dramatic  biography,"  "  Beethoven." 
But  this  production,  postponed  through  lack 
of  time  for  rehearsal,  was  ultimately  made  by 
other  actors,  after  the  season  of  the  New 
Theatre  company  had  closed.  It  need  not, 
therefore,  concern  us  here,  any  more  than 
the  production  of  "  A  Son  of  the  People," 
on  February  28,  by  John  Mason  and  his 
company. 

Counting  the  fourth  act  of  "  Brand  "  as  a 
separate  production,  and  forgetting  "  Liz,  the 
Mother,"  in  kindness  to  all  concerned,  we  find 
that  the  New  Theatre,  in  its  first  season  of 
twenty-four  weeks,  made  eleven  dramatic  pro- 
ductions with  its  own  company,  four  of  them 
classics ;  that  is,  according  to  the  definition  of 
the  literary  director,  plays  which  "  after  one 
hundred  years  are  still  alive  and  welcome  to 
the  public."    "  Antony  and  Cleopatra  "  was  n't 


30  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

very  warmly  welcomed,  but  possibly  Shake- 
si)eare  could  not  wholly  be  blamed !  Thus  one- 
third  of  the  repertoire  was  classic,  a  just  and 
admirable  proportion,  to  be  maintained  in  fu- 
ture seasons.  Of  the  remaining  seven  plays 
only  two  were  original  works  by  American 
authors,  and  only  one  of  them  was  a  treatment 
of  American  characters  and  conditions.  This 
is  neither  a  just  nor  an  admirable  proportion. 
Of  the  five  modern  plays  that  completed  the 
first  season's  repertoire,  three  —  "  Strife," 
"  Sister  Beatrice,"  and  act  four  of  "  Brand  " 
—  represent  widely  different  types  of  style  and 
thought,  but  each  is  the  work  of  a  man  of 
power;  each  is  large,  significant,  and  was 
wisely  added  to  the  New  Theatre's  list. 
"  Don,"  also,  striking  a  lighter  note,  almost  a 
farcical  note,  without  being  commonplace  or 
cheap,  added  welcome  spice  and  gayety.  "  The 
Witch,"  as  it  came  to  the  stage,  was  neither 
foreign  drama  nor  American,  and  did  not 
justify  its  production. 

The  repertoire  for  the  first  season,  then, 
especially  in  the  light  of  the  fact  that  the  in- 
trusion of  grand  opera  prevented  more  than 
eleven  productions,  contained  a  hopeful  num- 
ber of  significant  and  worthy  plays,  and  trained 
the  company  in  a  wide  variety  of  parts,  in- 
cluding those  of  classic  poetic  drama,  artificial 
comedy,  modern  realism,  modern  farce-comedy, 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  31 

and  allegory.  Where  it  was  deficient,  woefully 
deficient,  was  in  American  drama.  The  excuse 
is  offered  that,  from  two  thousand  manuscripts 
submitted,  nothing  better  could  be  picked.  And 
this  excuse  is  probably  valid,  hard  as  the  un- 
initiated will  find  it  to  believe.  The  New 
Theatre  has  not  yet  the  prestige  to  attract  the 
work  of  such  native  writers  for  the  stage  as 
possess  real  and  tested  talent.  It  cannot  offer 
to  them,  even  at  the  high  rate  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars  a  performance,  sufficient  royal- 
ties to  draw  their  work  away  from  the  com- 
mercial theatre.  And  right  here  lies  the  most 
important  field  of  future  effort  for  the  New 
Theatre. 

If  it  is  to  be  only  a  house  where  a  resident 
stock  company  presents  the  classics  and  such 
European  novelties  as  are  not  likely  to  reach 
our  stage  through  the  ordinary  channels,  its 
usefulness  is  limited  and  its  purpose  rather 
vague.  Its  appeal  will  remain  to  a  narrow 
circle  of  patrons,  and  for  the  democratic  mass 
of  theatre-goers  it  will  bear  an  academic  taint. 
But  if  it  can  add  to  this  appeal  the  appeal  of 
vital  American  drama  written  without  any 
thought  of  happy  or  unhappy  endings,  any 
consideration  of  the  demands  of  a  star  per- 
former, any  need  to  conciliate  the  prejudices 
of  ignorant  or  vulgar  managers  or  to  pander 
to  supposed  popular  taste,  then  the  New  The- 


82  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

atre  will  come  to  stand  for  something  definite, 
progressive  and  fine  in  American  dramatic 
art,  something  national  and  truly  new.  We 
have  had  "  art  theatres  "  before.  As  a  flower 
of  the  field,  so  they  flourished.  We  have  had, 
also,  stock  companies  in  the  past.  William 
Warren  was  a  wonderful  example  of  the  artist 
a  stock  company  can  produce.  There  were 
kings  before  Agamenmon.  But  we  have  never 
before  had  a  theatre  backed  by  such  unlimited 
capital,  equipped  wath  such  resources,  founded 
upon  a  basis  strong  enough  to  endure  the 
strain  of  financial  loss,  public  neglect,  and 
critical  attack,  until  it  can  make  for  itself  a 
new  public  and  draw  to  itself  the  most  dar- 
ing and  stimulating  work  of  native  play- 
wrights. 

In  America  to-day  it  is  difficult  to  secure 
production  for  a  native  play  with  no  star  part. 
It  is  doubly  difficult  to  secure  production  for 
a  poetic  play,  or  one  with  sectional  appeal,  or 
one  that  might  conceivably  offend  this,  that, 
or  the  other  class.  It  is  difficult  to  secure  pro- 
duction for  a  "  literary  drama  "  (which  is  not, 
to  be  sure,  an  unmixed  evil!)  or  an  intellectual 
farce  or  a  satire.  It  is  almost  impossible  to 
secure  production  for  a  tragedy.  Native  plays 
of  all  these  descriptions  the  New  Theatre 
should  —  and  doubtless  even  now  would  — 
welcome.     Probably  it  can  never  promise  to 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  33 

the  writer  such  financial  returns  as  he  would 
gain  from  a  successful  play  in  the  commercial 
theatre.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  native 
dramas  the  New  Theatre  should  seek  are  those 
that  are  not  certain  of  success  in  the  commer- 
cial theatre,  because  they  are  written  utterly 
for  the  delight  of  the  author  in  free  and  frank 
self-expression,  with  no  thought  of  star  or 
manager  or  public  in  mind.  Have  we  no  play- 
wrights who  create  sometimes  from  inner  im- 
pulse, for  love  of  their  craft,  and  not  solely 
from  motives  of  sordid  gain?  Until  we  have 
such  playwrights  we  shall  never  have  a  truly 
vital  and  worthy  American  drama;  we  shall, 
indeed,  have  no  playwrights  deserving  the  high 
title  of  artists. 

The  New  Theatre,  then,  if  it  can  find  and 
produce  from  season  to  season,  not  one  play 
like  "  The  Nigger,"  but  half  a  dozen,  —  and 
better  plays  than  Mr.  Sheldon's,  —  mounting 
them  in  the  best  possible  manner,  with  well- 
balanced  and  forceful  acting,  will  come,  in  our 
largest  American  city,  to  stand  for  something 
definite  and  American.  It  will  train  a  public 
to  be  interested  in  new  plays  for  their  own 
sake,  in  the  art  of  the  drama,  not  merely  to 
follow  the  mob  to  the  latest  success;  it  will 
attract  fresh  and  solid  and  daring  American 
work,  and  gain  a  prestige  which  will  stamp 
the  play  of  a  new  author  with   the   sterling 


34  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

mark.  It  is  going  to  take  time  to  bring  this 
about;  that  we  must  expect,  and  be  patient. 
But,  in  spite  of  the  pitiful  showing  of  native 
drama  in  the  first  season's  repertoire,  the  dream 
is  not  Utopian.     It  can  be  brought  to  reality. 

What,  in  working  for  the  realization  of  this 
dream,  the  New  Theatre  must  guard  against 
with  unceasing  vigilance,  however,  is  the  in- 
sidious danger  of  immediate  popularity.  It 
will  not  do  for  the  New  Theatre  to  mount 
American  plays  no  different  from  and  no  bet- 
ter than  a  dozen  visible  on  Broadway,  and  then 
bask  in  the  comfortable  luxury  of  possibly  full 
stalls.  This  is  robbing  the  future  to  pay  the 
present.  The  New  Theatre  must,  perhaps  for 
several  years,  reverse  the  process.  It  must  rob 
the  present  to  pay  the  future.  It  must  gain  for 
itself,  at  any  sacrifice,  a  reputation  not  alone 
for  an  excellent  company,  for  fine  acting  in  the 
least  as  well  as  in  the  largest  parts,  but  for  a 
repertoire  of  native  dramas  with  a  distinction 
of  style,  a  daring  or  originality  of  thought,  a 
freshness  of  observation  or  ripeness  of  humor 
or  pungency  of  satire,  that  cannot  be  found  ex- 
cept in  scattered  instances  in  the  commercial 
theatre.  Thus,  and  thus  alone,  will  it  build  up 
for  itself  a  solid  reputation  and  an  enduring 
public,  so  that  it  can  attract  an  ever-renewed 
supply  of  the  best  work  of  our  best  dramatists, 
and  come  to  occupy   in   time   the  position  of 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  35 

leader  in  American  theatrical  affairs.  Thus 
alone,  at  any  rate,  can  it  become  truly  a  New 
Theatre. 


"STRIFE,"    A    DRAMATIC    DEBATE 

New  Theatre,  November  17,  1909 

"  Strife,"  by  John  Galsworthy,  is  constructed 
with  the  logical  precision  of  a  debate,  and  ar- 
gues for  both  sides.  But  Mr.  Galsworthy 
combines  the  temperament  of  the  scientific  in- 
vestigator with  the  dramatist's  sense  of  charac- 
ter and  the  literary  artist's  sense  of  natural 
incident  and  human  speech.  His  play  is  peopled 
not  with  debaters  but  with  persons ;  the  debate 
is  conducted  in  terms  of  life.  Reaching  the 
stage  of  the  New  Theatre,  it  found  a  director 
in  Mr.  George  Foster  Piatt  peculiarly  fitted  to 
order  its  action  at  once  naturally  and  with  log- 
ical progression,  and  a  company  of  men  and 
women  —  but  especially  men  —  to  assume  its 
many  characters,  who  were  at  home  in  its  mod- 
ern realistic  and  polemic  atmosphere  and  keen 
to  reproduce  with  minute  fidelity  its  stark  pic- 
ture of  industrial  conditions.  "  Strife  "  is  a 
play  which  has  few  of  the  traditional  elements 
of  popular  appeal,  but  yet  one  which  satisfies  as 
few  dramas  have  done  in  recent  years  alike  the 


36  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

intellectual  faculties  of  the  beholder  and  his 
sense  of  reality.  It  is  played  at  the  New  Thea- 
tre with  beautiful  devotion  to  the  author's  in- 
tent and,  by  each  smallest  actor,  with  self-effac- 
ing realism.  Never  was  an  audience  more 
completely  ignored  from  the  stage.  It  is  the 
kind  of  drama  —  or  surely  one  kind  of  drama 
—  which  the  New  Theatre  must  rightly  and 
inevitably  shelter  from  the  neglect  of  the  com- 
mercial playhouse,  and  the  manner  in  which 
this  shelter  has  been  afforded  is  the  most  hope- 
ful sign  of  progress  the  New  Theatre  has  yet 
displayed. 

There  is  something  refreshingly  neuter 
.about  "  Strife."  It  is  an  oasis  of  sanity  in  a 
desert  of  sex.  The  difference  between  a  prob- 
lem play  and  a  popular  play  is  usually  a  differ- 
ence in  the  morals  of  the  heroine  —  or  her 
methods.  But,  since  the  Lord  took  a  rib  from 
Adam  in  the  cause  of  woman's  suffrage,  men 
and  women  have  occasionally  been  preoccu- 
pied with  other  things  than  each  other ;  and  if 
one  of  these  alien  matters  is  bravely  chosen  by 
a  playwright  for  the  theme  of  his  play,  there  is 
no  good  reason  why  it  should  not  remain  the 
theme  of  his  play.  A  great  many  authors  have 
started  hopefully  out  on  this  supposition,  but 
almost  invariably  they  have  ended  by  introduc- 
ing a  "  love  interest "  in  deference  to  popular 
demand,  and  then  it  was  all  up  with  them. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  m 

Mr.  Galsworthy,  however,  has  a  profound  pas- 
sion for  truth.  Starting  out  to  consider  the 
problem  of  a  labor  war,  he  insists  on  sticking  to 
his  task;  he  cannot  be  bothered  with  these  ir- 
relevant sentimental  conventions  of  the  play- 
house. He  cannot  even  permit  himself  to  take 
sides  with  his  characters.  "  Strife  "  pictures 
from  both  points  of  view  a  strike  in  a  great  tin- 
plate  mill,  and  it  pictures  nothing  else.  It  is 
dispassionate  and  neuter.  It  is  an  industrial 
debate  wherein  the  arguments  are  the  acts  and 
the  consequences  of  the  acts  of  living  people. 
It  is  a  fresh  note  in  drama,  sounded  by  a  com- 
paratively new  and  splendidly  equipped  writer. 
His  play,  "  The  Silver  Box,"  shown  for  too 
brief  a  time  in  America  by  Miss  Ethel  Barry- 
more,  hinted  it;  ''Strife"  is  the  fulfillment. 

The  opening  act  of  "  Strife  "  shows  the  di- 
rectors of  the  tin-plate  mill  in  executive  meet- 
ing, dominated  by  their  chairman,  John  An- 
thony, an  aged  capitalist  who  has  fought  his 
employees  before  to  a  finish  and  who  does  not 
propose  to  give  in  now  to  their  demands.  He 
}s  a  proud  and  willful  man,  but  he  commands 
respect.  He  represents  the  older  order;  he 
feels  that  he  is  fighting  the  battle  of  all  capital 
for  the  right  to  do  as  it  pleases,  the  extreme 
individualistic  view  of  a  generation  ago. 
David  Roberts,  the  fanatic  leader  of  the  strike, 
no  less  sincerely  believes  that  he  is  fighting 


88  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

the  battle  of  all  labor  to  prevent  capital  from 
doing  as  it  pleases.  Compromise  between  these 
two  men  is  impossible.  In  spite  of  the  efforts 
at  arbitration  made  by  a  delegate  from  the 
Central  Union  and  in  spite  of  the  wishes  of 
the  younger  and  more  enlightened  or  humani- 
tarian directors,  including  Anthony's  own  son, 
the  strike  goes  on. 

Act  two  shows  first  the  interior  of  Roberts' 
home,  where  his  beloved  wife  is  dying  for 
want  of  sufficient  heat  and  food.  But  still 
Roberts  will  not  yield.  He  is  capable  of  of- 
fering a  living  sacrifice  to  his  God,  the  cause 
of  labor.  Starkly,  pitilessly,  the  results  on  their 
women  of  the  laborers'  battle  is  depicted. 
Then  the  scene  shifts  to  the  mill  yard,  under 
the  black  chimney  stacks,  and  the  mob  of  idle 
workmen  are  shown  swayed  now  by  this 
speaker,  now  by  that.  Roberts  harangues 
them  with  the  fiery  zeal  of  a  fanatic  who  will 
not  compromise  with  his  ideal.  He  is  a  blast- 
furnace Brand;  he  must  have  all  or  nothing. 
But  he  sees  the  men  slipping  from  him  and 
he  is  brought  suddenly  to  silence  by  the  news 
of  his  wife's  death.  The  meeting  —  and  the 
act  —  ends  in  a  babel  of  quarreling  tongues 
and  a  maze  of  striking  fists.  The  laborers  are 
presented  in  no  more  heroic  a  light  than  the 
capitalists. 

In   the  last  act  the   directors   are  meeting 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  39 

again.  They  finally  vote  down  old  Anthony 
and  agree  to  arbitrate.  The  workmen,  having 
voted  down  Roberts,  agree  also.  His  pride 
broken,  his  cause  seeming  to  him  quite  lost, 
Anthony  resigns  from  the  head  of  the  com- 
pany. There  is  something  pathetic  about  him. 
The  new  order  has  passed  him  by.  And 
Roberts,  his  cause  lost,  his  pride  and  his  heart 
alike  broken,  for  the  woman  he  sacrificed  lies 
dead  at  home,  is  more  than  pathetic;  he  is 
tragic.     The  play  closes  with  irony  : 

Harness,  the  delegate  from  the  Central  Union, 
speaks :  A  woman  dead,  and  the  two  best  men  both 
broken ! 

Tench  (staring  at  him,  suddenly  excited)  :  D'  you 
know,  sir,  —  those  terms,  they  're  the  very  same 
we  drew  up  together,  you  and  I,  and  put  to  both 
sides  before  the  fight  began?  All  this  —  all  this 
—  and  —  and  what  for  ? 

Harness  (m  a  slow,  grim  voice)  :  That 's  where 
the  fun  comes  in! 


There  is  about  this  play,  which  some  will 
complain  ends  nowhere,  a  grim  completeness. 
It  has  presented  one  situation  only,  but  it  has 
presented  that  from  every  side  and  left  it  to 
the  spectator  to  draw  his  own  conclusions. 
Nothing  more  remains  to  be  said;  there  only 
remains  the  awakened  consciousness  in  us  of 


40  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

mutual  obligations,  and  the  world's  need  of 
mutual  sympathy  and  brotherly  recognition. 
The  actors  of  the  New  Theatre  company  so 
self-effacingly  labored  for  the  good  of  the  play 
that  it  is  seemly  none  should  here  be  signaled 
out  for  special  mention.  They  splendidly  did 
their  part  in  presenting  a  play  of  genuine 
importance. 


AIR.    SHELDON    WRESTLES    AND    IS 
THROWN 

New  Theatre,   December  4,  1909 

The  New  Theatre  made  its  fourth  dramatic 
production  on  Saturday  evening,  December  4, 
1909,  and  ''  The  Nigger,"  by  Edward  Sheldon, 
author  of  ''  Salvation  Nell,"  was  the  play 
chosen.  This  was  the  first  truly  native  drama 
shown  at  the  New  Theatre,  since  the  repertoire 
thus  far  had  consisted  of  "  Antony  and  Cleo- 
patra ";  "  The  Cottage  in  the  Air,"  a  fantastic 
comedy  with  scenes  laid  in  Germany  and  Eng- 
land ;  and  "  Strife,"  which,  though  altered  in 
scene  to  Ohio  in  the  present  performance,  was 
written  by  Mr.  Galsworthy,  an  Englishman. 
It  really  rested  with  Mr.  Sheldon,  then,  a  man 
young  in  years  and  experience,  to  supply  the 
first  American  drama  for  the  stage  of  the  New 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  41 

Theatre.  The  ''  Harvard  playwright,"  as  Mr. 
Sheldon  has  been  somewhat  laughingly  dubbed, 
at  least  had  the  satisfaction  of  arousing  in  a 
New  Theatre  audience  almost  the  first  good, 
hearty,  unashamed  enthusiasm  which  had  been 
heard  in  that  aspiring  and  ornate  institution. 
At  the  close  of  the  second  act  the  audience 
quite  forgot  the  solemnity  of  the  temple  and 
called  loudly  for  the  blushing  author,  who 
finally  came  forth  with  the  timidity  of  a 
startled  robin,  clung  frantically  to  the  pro- 
scenium frame  for  an  instant,  and  bobbed  out 
of  sight  again.  He  looked  very  young  to  have 
been  speaking  so  plainly  as  he  did  sometimes 
in  his  play. 

"  The  Nigger "  has  a  purpose.  Its  chief 
trouble  is  that  it  has  a  better  purpose  than 
plan.  Its  purpose  is  to  present  on  the  stage  in 
vivid,  concrete  terms  the  plight  of  the  modern 
negro  in  the  South,  not  to  inveigh  against 
white  prejudice,  not  to  counsel  black  rebellion, 
but  to  present  sympathetically  both  sides,  and 
to  urge  mutual  toleration,  patience,  work  for 
the  good  of  all,  the  future  good  of  the  nation. 
More  than  incidentally  the  purpose  of  the  play 
may  be  considered  also  to  show  the  evils  of  the 
liquor  traffic  among  the  negroes. 

Manifestly,  here  is  a  play  that  is  aimed  to 
touch  life  vitally  in  its  choice  of  theme  and 
material.     Though  the  expedient  of  bringing 


42  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

about  a  catastrophe  by  the  discovery  of  negro 
bJood  in  the  veins  of  a  leading  character  is  not 
new  —  in  Bernstein's  "Israel,"  also  visible  in 
New  York,  the  same  expedient  was  used,  with 
the  variation  of  Hebrew  blood,  —  the  value  of 
the  play  is  not  necessarily  impaired  by  its  arti- 
ficial structure.  If  the  purpose  is  to  make  a 
significant  commentary  on  American  life,  the 
play  naturally  takes  its  place  in  the  ranks  of 
progress,  not  as  one  of  the  old  machines  for 
the  manufacture  of  theatrical  excitement. 

The  weakness  of  "  The  Nigger  "  lies  rather 
in  the  fact  that  Mr.  Sheldon  had  more  to  say 
than  he  quite  knew  how  to  say;  that  he  was 
embarrassed  by  his  wealth  of  material  and  the 
tremendous  gravity  of  his  theme,  and  between 
his  efiforts  to  make  his  mere  story  plain  and 
theatrically  effective  and  his  efforts  to  make 
his  moral  —  in  the  larger  sense  of  that  word 
—  clear,  his  play  progresses  by  alternate  waves 
of  action  and  debate,  and  in  the  final  act  (the 
third)  repeats  itself  rather  than  moves  for- 
ward. The  total  effect  is  neither  one  of  a  con- 
vincing argument  nor  a  wholly  convincing  and 
moving  story.  The  total  effect  is  splotchy  ; 
and  this  only  goes  to  show,  perhaps,  as  Mr. 
Galsworthy  has  recently  remarked,  that  the 
modern  naturalistic  drama  of  contemporane- 
ous life  is  the  most  difficult  of  all  drama  to 
write. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  43 

The  opening  scene  of  *'  The  Nigger  "  shows 
the  great,  pillared  country  mansion  of  Philip 
Morrow,  who  is  one  of  those  real  "  Southern 
gentlemen,"  as  is  proved  by  his  hatred  of 
''niggers."  But  he  is  also  sheriff  of  the 
county,  and  has  a  conscience.  When  a  young 
negro  commits  the  "  usual  crime  "  (crazed  by 
whiskey),  Morrow  attempts  to  shield  him  from 
the  lynchers.  Clifton  Noyes,  president  of  the 
big  distillery,  who  has  offered  him  the  gover- 
norship because  he  is  sure  Morrow  will  veto 
a  threatened  prohibition  bill,  contrives,  how- 
ever, to  prevent  his  candidate  doing  anything 
so  fatal  to  his  chances  for  election.  The  in- 
evitable sweet  Southern  girl,  whom  Morrow 
loves,  remarks  consolingly  and  characteristic- 
ally at  the  curtain,  "  After  all,  it  was  only  a 
nigger."  The  chief  merit  of  this  act  is  its 
vivid  suggestion  of  the  horrors  of  the  incident 
and  the  pursuit  of  the  criminal  by  the  lynch- 
ing party.  Not  a  pleasant  topic,  but  one  we 
can  hardly  blink  at  none  the  less. 

By  the  second  act  Morrow  has  become  gov- 
ernor. A  race  riot,  in  no  small  part  incited 
by  drink,  has  been  in  progress  for  some  days, 
and  Morrow  has  called  out  the  State  militia. 
He  has  come  to  the  point  where  he  sees  it  his 
duty  to  sign  the  prohibition  bill,  and  he  tells 
Noyes  so.  That  gentleman  then  plays  his 
card.    Proof  has  come  to  him,  in  the  shape  of 


44  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

a  letter  from  a  slave  girl  to  Morrow's  grand- 
father, that  Morrow  has  "  nigger  blood "  in 
his  veins.  His  grandfather,  a  slave  owner  be- 
fore the  war,  when  his  wife  died  in  childbirth 
and  the  child  died  also,  had  substituted  his 
child  by  the  slave  girl,  sold  the  mother  "  down 
the  river,"  and  thus  kept  his  property  from 
passing  to  another  branch  of  the  family  — 
Noyes's  branch  —  which  he  disliked.  (Judg- 
ing from  Noyes,  you  did  not  wholly  blame 
him.)  No  one  living  knew  of  this  deception 
save  Morrow's  "  old  mammy,"  a  sister  of  the 
slave  who  was  his  real  grandmother.  Noyes 
demands  that  Morrow  question  her.  He  does 
so.  She  will  admit  nothing;  she  can  remember 
nothing,  she  says,  after  the  manner  of  aged 
ncgresses.  Then  Noyes  demands  that  Morrow 
read  aloud  the  letter  from  the  slave  girl,  the 
letter  which  had  disclosed  to  him  the  secret. 
This,  perhaps,  is  the  most  poignant  and  effec- 
tive moment  of  the  play.  As  the  old  negress 
hears  him  read  these  touching,  heart-breaking 
words  from  her  dead,  wronged,  but  doggedly 
devoted  sister,  she  can  stand  it  no  longer. 
With  a  shriek  she  breaks  down,  crying  out  that 
it  is  her  sister's  voice  she  hears,  lamenting  to 
"  de  good  Lord  "  that  ''  things  never  seem  to 
end,"  with  a  wail  as  piteous  and  thrilling  as 
those  wild,  religious  petitions  of  the  black  race. 
Noyes   then   breaks   in  on   Morrow's   fresh 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  45 

horror  with  the  proposition  that  he  should 
now  veto  the  prohibition  bill,  since,  if  he  does 
not,  he,  Noyes,  can  expose  him  to  the  world 
for  a  ''  nigger."  Naturally,  our  hero  rises 
above  this  awful  bribe  without  a  struggle,  and 
shows  his  caller  the  door.  But  if  here  he  was 
a  little  too  good  for  human  nature's  represen- 
tative, Mr.  Sheldon  soon  makes  up  for  that. 
The  sweet  Southern  girl,  now  the  governor's 
fiancee,  who  seems  in  some  mysterious  way  to 
be  always  in  his  house,  enters,  and  to  her 
Morrow  tells  the  awful  truth,  breaking  off 
their  engagement.  But  he  instantly  repents. 
No,  he  cries,  he  is  the  same  as  before;  they 
love  each  other;  it  shall  make  no  difference. 
And  he  seizes  her  roughly  in  his  arms.  The 
girl,  overwhelmed  with  horror,  as  any  girl 
would  be,  struggles  to  repulse  him  and  fights 
him  frantically.  So  this  was  her  love,  he 
shouts.  It  was  n't  half  so  great  as  the  love 
his  "  nigger "  grandmother  gave  her  white 
master.  He  drives  her  hands  behind  her 
and  kisses  her  madly.  If  Mr.  Sheldon  was 
aiming  to  show  by  this  brutal,  repulsive  scene 
that  "  nigger  blood "  will  out,  he  succeeded 
only  too  well.  If  that  was  not  this  purpose, 
the  scene  becomes  unintelligible.  At  any  rate, 
you  are  glad  of  the  relief  which  comes  from 
the  arrival  of  a  third  person,  the  rush  of  the 
poor   girl   from   the   room,   and   the   curtain. 


46  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

When  the  cherubic  face  of  the  author  appeared 
in  answer  to  the  plaudits  of  the  audience  at  the 
first  performance  you  marveled  that  he  could 
have  written  it. 

In  the  third  (and  last)  act,  Morrow  first  has 
an  extended  scene  with  Senator  Long,  author 
of  the  prohibition  bill,  friend  of  the  negroes, 
who  preaches  wisely  and  at  great  length  ac- 
cording to  the  best  teachings  of  Booker  T. 
Washington,  and  shows  Morrow  the  way  out 
of  his  perplexities.  Then  Noyes  comes  back, 
drunk,  doubtless  on  his  own  whiskey.  The  bill 
has  yet  to  be  signed.  It  lies  on  the  governor's 
desk.  The  scene  here  altogether  too  closely 
duplicates  that  in  the  earlier  act.  He  threatens 
exposure.  Morrow  signs  the  bill  under  his 
very  nose.  And  then  the  girl  enters.  She  still 
loves  Morrow,  she  tells  him;  she  cannot  live 
without  him.  This  is  a  little  too  much  to  swal- 
low. Where  in  that  little  feminine  bundle  of 
Southern  conventions  lay  the  strength  of  char- 
acter (if  strength  is  the  right  word!)  to  bring 
her  to  this?  It  was  not  there.  Granted  that 
she  could  still  love  the  man  after  the  brutal 
shame  of  his  former  conduct,  she  would  have 
gone  no  farther  than  loving  him  in  secret  and 
in  silence.  But  she  had  to  come  on  in  the  last 
act,  or  so  the  stage  conventions  run,  and  there 
had  to  be  a  final  scene  between  the  lovers.  For- 
tunately, Morrow  in  act  three  is  quite  a  dififer- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  47 

ent  man  from  Morrow  in  act  two.  He  treats 
her  calmly  and  respectfully.  He  goes  all  over 
the  ground  again,  explaining  that  he  is  now 
going  down  among  his  people  to  work  for 
them,  and  that  she  cannot  follow  him  there. 
The  play  ends  with  his  going  out  on  the  bal- 
cony of  the  State  House  to  address  the  people, 
to  tell  them  his  secret  himself,  thus  forestal- 
ling the  revelations  Noyes  is  about  to  make 
in  the  newspapers. 

Obviously,  the  emotional  interest  in  this  play 
is  —  or  should  be,  rather  —  in  the  tragedy  of 
the  proud,  ambitious  Morrow,  who  wakes  sud- 
denly to  find  himself  a  "  nigger,"  an  exile  from 
his  home  and  hopes,  from  his  sweetheart  and 
his  dreams.  Yet,  as  Mr.  Sheldon  has  written 
it,  and  as  it  was  played  by  Mr.  Guy  Bates  Post 
in  the  part  of  Morrow,  and  by  the  other  ac- 
tors, the  play  is  most  poignant  in  its  moments 
of  sheer  theatrical  appeal,  almost  of  melodrama, 
such  as  the  suspense  of  the  cross-examination 
of  the  old  mammy  and  her  cry  of  revelation,  or 
the  pursuit  of  the  fugitive  in  act  one.  Between 
his  interest  in  the  suspense  of  his  story  and  in 
the  elucidation  of  the  broader  aspects  of  the 
negro  question  in  the  South,  Mr.  Sheldon  neg- 
lected too  much  his  chief  figure,  as  a  human 
being.  Unless  the  figures  live  and  sufifer  for 
the  audience,  unless  their  personal  fate  is  fol- 
lowed, their  minds  and  hearts  felt  as  real,  the 


48  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

naturalistic  drama  of  contemporary  life  can 
have  but  little  value,  after  all.  That  is  what 
makes  its  technique  so  difficult  and  so  baffling. 
From  the  moment  when  Morrow  learned  of  his 
birth,  he  became  a  rather  nebulous  figure,  not 
suffering  so  much  as  listening  to  theories  which 
w^re  only  said  by  the  dramatist  to  have  altered 
his  character  and  point  of  view.  And,  it  must 
be  confessed,  Mr.  Post's  dignified,  "  repressed," 
but  monotonous  and  unemotional  style  of  act- 
ing did  not  aid  in  the  illusion. 

Miss  Annie  Russdl  portrayed  the  sweet,  con- 
ventional Southern  girl  with  seemly  and  intelli- 
gent sweetness,  though  her  acting  is  rather  lost 
in  the  vast  spaces  of  the  New  Theatre.  Other 
character  parts  were  excellently  played,  espe- 
cially the  old  mammy  by  Miss  Beverly  Sit- 
greaves,  the  prohibition  senator  by  Lee  Baker, 
and  the  governor's  secretary,  a  breezy  young 
Southerner  of  a  peculiarly  ingratiating  type,  by 
Jacob  Wendell,  Jr.,  who  betrays  no  traces  of 
the  amateur,  unless  it  is  his  ability  always  to 
look  like  a  gentleman.  The  play  was  mounted 
with  that  good  taste  which  already  has  come 
to  characterize  the  scenery  at  the  New  Theatre. 
The  first  act  set  was  almost  as  beautiful,  in  its 
large  way,  as  Willard  Metcalf's  "  May  Night," 
though  of  course  the  glimmering  mystery  of 
the  white  pillars  could  not  be  caught.  At 
least  the  play  was  of,  by  and  for  Americans. 


AT    THE    new:    theatre  41) 

And  the  interest  with  which  it  was  followed 
shows  the  place  which  exists  for  just  such 
efforts. 


"  DON  "  AND  "  LIZ,  THE  MOTHER  " 

New  Theatre,  December  30,  1909 

In  "Don,"  by  Rudolph  Besier  the  New 
Theatre  furnished  a  second  excellent  per- 
formance of  a  first-class  new  play.  Un- 
Hke  the  grave  and  thoughtful  "  Strife,"  it 
is  a  gay,  almost  ironic,  comedy,  with  just 
a  touch  of  tears  at  the  conclusion  —  salt 
to  the  feast.  But  it  is  like  "  Strife  "  in  one 
respect,  not  very  flattering  to  our  national  pride, 
—  it  is  the  work  of  an  Englishman,  and  was 
first  produced  "  commercially "  in  the  Hay- 
market  Theatre,  London,  where  it  enjoyed 
great  success.  The  New  Theatre's  experi- 
ments with  untried  American  pieces  have  re- 
sulted in  "  The  Cottage  in  the  Air  "  and  "  The 
Nigger,"  one  a  failure,  the  other  falling  short 
of  satisfactory  drama.  The  New  Theatre  is 
having  its  little  object  lesson  in  the  difficulty 
of  picking  plays,  and  perhaps  is  learning  sym- 
pathy with  those  managers  who  go  abroad  for 
tried  successes.  The  lesson  will  do  no  harm, 
if  it  is  not  too  bitter  and  discouraging. 


60  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

"  Don,"  as  it  was  acted  on  the  opening 
night,  even  in  the  vast  spaces  of  the  New 
Theatre  became  a  hving  story,  interesting, 
gayly  ironic,  endlessly  amusing,  human,  touch- 
ing. The  l)0xes  of  the  "  diamond  horseshoe  " 
were  in  most  cases  not  occupied  by  the 
founders;  in  some  sat  men  and  women  with- 
out evening  dress.  There  was  no  social  dis- 
traction in  the  auditorium.  The  theatre  has 
failed  dismally  as  a  social  diversion,  and 
therein,  perhaps,  lies  the  best  hope  of  its  suc- 
cess as  a  theatre.  At  "  Don  "  the  audience 
was  democratic  and  interested  in  the  play,  not 
in  itself.  Good,  honest  laughter  rose;  good, 
honest  applause.  As  the  play  rapidly  disclosed 
itself  as  capital  comedy,  witty,  shrewd,  and  full 
of  character  observation,  and  as  the  almost 
flawless  ensemble  arranged  by  George  Foster 
Piatt,  the  stage  manager,  and  the  excellent  act- 
ing of  every  person  in  the  cast  began  to  make 
themselves  felt,  that  indefinable  atmosphere  of 
interest  and  pleasure  which  attends  success  in 
the  theatre  spread  through  the  auditorium. 
Cheerful  faces  were  bent  on  the  stage.  Men 
and  women  spoke  hopefully  between  the 
acts. 

It  would  be  as  senseless  to  try  to  reproduce 
the  charm  of  "  Don  "  by  narrating  the  skeleton 
of  its  story  as  it  was  to  try  to  reproduce  the 
charm  of  Henry  Arthur  Jones's  "  The  Liars  " 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  51 

by  that  clumsy  reportorial  method.  Indeed, 
Besier  suggests  Jones,  without  being  in  the 
least  like  him.  "  Don  "  finds  its  scenes  in  the 
house  of  an  English  Canon  ;  and,  against 
church  conventions  and  worldly  conventions, 
which  are  cleverly  permitted  to  appear  much 
the  same,  are  contrasted  the  quixotic  humani- 
tarian impulses  of  the  Canon's  son,  which  are 
in  turn  cleverly  permitted  to  appear  at  the  end 
oddly  like  the  Puritan  heart  of  non-conformism. 
Whatever  Mr.  Besier's  faith  —  if  he  has  one 
—  he  has  in  "  Don,"  a  satirical  comedy,  writ- 
ten for  the  thoughtful  beholder  a  truer  and 
psychologically  sounder  "  morality "  than 
"  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back."  And 
the  triumph  is,  the  audience  does  n't  know  it  — 
or  not  until  the  next  day's  soberer  thought,  at 
any  rate.  He  differs  from  Mr.  Jones,  then,  in 
burying  far  deeper  his  ethical  intent;  if,  in- 
deed, there  was  such  intent.  Probably  the 
ethical  message  resulted  from  the  truthful  out- 
come of  a  truthful  story,  told  for  its  own 
sake.  Mr.  Jones,  of  course,  does  not  write 
the  passing  of  third  floors  back,  either;  but 
he  still  is  palpably  very  dead  in  earnest,  through 
all  his  fun.  Mr.  Besier  is  almost  Gallic  in 
his  lightness.  His  wit  is  not  acid.  He  runs 
gayly  at  times  over  the  thin  ice  of  farce,  and 
fascinates  you  with  his  success  in  getting  to 
the  other  bank  without  wetting  his  feet.     He 


6«  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

suggests,  too,  a  man  who  could  make  epigrams 
if  he  wanted  to,  but  heroically  refrains  because 
his  characters  were  n't  that  sort  of  people. 
How  his  Don  would  have  spouted  had  Shaw 
written  the  play  !  He  gets  his  fun  from  his 
situations  and  from  his  characters,  and  always 
enough  from  his  characters  to  slide  over  that 
thin  ice  of  farce.  And  in  the  end  his  play 
plunges  down  to  emotional  sincerity  and  ten- 
derness and  wins  cleansing  tears.  He  is  a 
born  playwright.  His  is  a  fresh  pen  to  reckon 
with. 

The  scheme  of  "  Don  "  is  at  once  simple  and 
spiced,  at  once  psychologically  interesting  and 
valuable  and  just  Gallic  enough  to  tickle  the 
Saxon  palate.  Stephen  Bonnington,  son  of  the 
Canon,  is  called  Don  by  his  fiancee  not  be- 
cause of  his  similarity  to  Don  Juan,  in  spite  of 
his  good  looks  and  his  poetic  gifts,  but  because 
he  tilts  at  modern  windmills  like  that  other 
Spanish  Don  of  old.  He  is  one  of  those  rare 
souls  who  go  stubbornly  ahead  doing  what  they 
think  is  their  duty  to  their  fellows  in  spite  of 
the  world's  opinions,  and  with  a  fine  idealism 
which  the  world  can  never  understand  would 
pick  up  a  harlot  of  the  streets  if  she  were 
willing  to  be  helped,  even  if  by  so  doing  they 
lost  their  sweethearts  and  forfeited  their 
family  happiness.  The  Don  of  this  play 
does  n't  quite  do  this.    But  he  goes  to  a  woman 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  53 

in  trouble,  takes  her  away  from  her  husband, 
and  brings  her  to  his  father's  and  mother's 
house.  On  the  way  she  falls  sick,  and  he  re- 
mains over  night  with  her  at  a  hotel,  passing 
the  time  by  her  bedside  nursing  her.  When  he 
reaches  home  with  this  woman  he  is  confronted 
by  his  father,  the  Canon,  his  mother  (a  conven- 
tional, weak-minded,  rather  intellectually  help- 
less woman,  who  loves  her  boy  out  of  all  logic 
and  is  constantly  batted  from  outraged  conven- 
tional propriety  to  maternal  affection  like  a 
helpless  tennis  ball  over  a  net),  his  fiancee,  a 
girl  of  charm  and  sense,  his  future  mother-in- 
law,  a  woman  of  worldly  wisdom  and  humor, 
and  his  future  father-in-law,  an  irritable,  con- 
ventional old  army  officer.  They  already  have 
heard  of  his  exploit,  and  when  he  walks  calmly 
in  with  the  woman  and  tells  his  mother  to  put 
her  to  bed  upstairs,  the  various  kinds  and  de- 
grees of  consternation  and  indignation  mani- 
fested by  the  other  characters  make  a  scene  of 
true  comedy  at  once  hilariously  funny  and 
keenly  pleasurable  as  character  observation. 
That  is  the  first  act.  The  second  act  is  no  less 
delicious.  It  is  given  over  to  the  efforts  of  Don, 
always  good  natured  and  charming  he  is,  too, 
to  convince  the  others  of  the  purity  of  his  acts 
and  motives.  It  is  the  great  merit  of  this  play 
that  you  both  sympathize  with  Don,  and  would 
forgive  him  if  he  scornfully  burst  out  against 


64  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

this  cross-examination,  and  you  sympathize 
with  tlie  others,  too,  who  certainly  have  good 
cause  to  suspect  him,  and  certainly  have  good 
cause  to  be  vexed  at  the  worldly  gossip  which 
he  will  call  down  by  his  acts  upon  their  heads. 
Verily,  the  path  of  the  humanitarian  is  beset 
with  thorns. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  Don,  by  his  calm 
compromising  of  the  lady  at  the  hotel,  rather 
overstepped  the  possible  bounds  of  naive  hu- 
manitarian instincts.  The  men  with  the  fibre 
of  idealists  have  more  common  sense,  after 
all.  But  that  is  the  only  flaw  in  Mr.  Besier's 
fabric. 

Don  has  n't  got  matters  mended  much  when 
the  woman's  irate  husband  appears  upon  the 
scene.  He  is  an  uncouth  and  uncompromising 
non-conformist,  one  of  the  Plymouth  Brethren. 
Those  who  have  read  Edmund  Gosse's  book, 
**  Father  and  Son,"  will  understand  him  per- 
fectly. If  a  man  of  the  spiritual  fineness  and 
delicate  culture  of  the  elder  Gosse  could  be  such 
a  domestic  tyrant,  it  is  quite  believable  that  this 
uneducated  and  burly  fanatic,  Thomsett,  led 
his  wife  a  hard  life,  especially  after  he  found 
she  had  backslid  to  the  Church  of  England. 
But  the  man  loved  her,  madly,  fanatically,  as 
he  loved  his  religion.  Faith  came  to  him  "  in 
a  flash,"  he  said,  and  so  did  love.  He  is  rather 
a  pathetic  figure.    Don  refuses  to  give  him  back 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  55 

his  wife.  He  threatens  with  a  pistol.  The 
scene  is  at  once  intense  and  ironic.  But  the 
wife  finds  the  solution.  In  a  touching  confes- 
sion, that,  as  made  by  Miss  Thais  Lawton, 
brought  tears,  she  tells  how  she  has  always 
loved  Don  since  he  first  rescued  her  from 
death  or  worse  in  London;  how  she  married 
Thomsett  in  the  hope  of  finding  in  a  home  and 
children  some  repose;  how  his  tyranny  over 
her  soul  and  her  body  revolted  her ;  and  finally 
how  Don's  relations  to  her  had  been  always 
pure,  those  of  a  brother  to  his  sister  —  for  she 
says  all  who  suffer  are  his  brothers  and  sisters. 
Again  Thomsett  sees  the  truth  in  a  flash. 
His  unbending  Puritan  idealism  to  the  law  as 
he  interprets  it,  and  Don's  unbending  idealism 
to  his  impulses  of  brotherhood,  which  leads  him 
to  disregard  all  law,  make  them  brothers.  A 
compromise,  based  on  a  new  understanding  and 
respect,  is  struck.  There  is  growth  in  each 
man,  and  true  growth.  The  wife  goes  back, 
you  are  sure,  to  kinder  treatment  and  ultimate 
happiness.  The  husband's  horizon  is  widened. 
And  Don,  probably  without  losing  any  of  his 
enthusiastic  impulses,  has  learned  tact  and  wis- 
dom. As  for  the  rest,  they  have  all  been  a  little 
bewildered  by  the  whirl  of  events  jarring  them 
out  of  their  ruts  of  convention  and  moral  habit. 
That  is  always  good  for  commonplace  folk, 
on  the  stage  or  in  an  audience  or  in  the  world. 


56  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Only  the  sensible  sweetheart  ends  the  play  with 
a  quaint  little  speculation.  Will  she,  she  won- 
ders, have  to  forgive  her  Don  these  little  tragic 
farces  all  her  life?    Let  us  hope  so ! 

The  acting  and  the  staging  of  this  piece  were 
well-nigh  flawless.  It  lies  within  the  range  of 
the  New  Theatre  company.  For  instance, 
Matheson  Lang,  a  bad  Charles  Surface,  was 
natural,  charming,  easy,  convincing  as  Don. 
Louis  Calvert,  who  as  Sir  Peter  Teazle  lacked 
distinction  and  depth,  as  the  Plymouth  Brother 
husband,  a  modern  character  role  not  calling 
for  distinction,  displayed  a  rough  sincerity  of 
feeling  that  carried  the  last  act  up  to  the  serious 
level.  E.  AL  Holland  was,  of  course,  adequate 
for  the  Canon.  Mrs.  Dellenbaugh,  as  the 
Canon's  wife,  gave  a  capital  satiric  sketch  of 
a  certain  type  of  conventional  woman  that  is 
a  terrible  trial  to  live  with,  but  excellent  fun 
for  an  evening  across  the  footlights.  William 
McVay,  who  murdered  the  text  of  "  Antony 
and  Cleopatra,"  in  the  modern  character  part  of 
the  fussy,  conventional  old  general  was  a  de- 
light ;  so  was  Miss  Sitgreaves  as  his  worldly 
wise  and  witty  wife  ;  and  Miss  Thais  Lawton, 
totally  without  distinction  as  Lady  Sneerwell, 
here  was  touching,  sincere  and  effective.  Miss 
Leah  Bateman-Hunter,  a  very  young  actress 
from  England,  played  the  fiancee,  and  contrived 
to  give  the  part  an  indefinable  suggestion  of 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  57 

intellectual  poise  and  real  feeling,  even  when 
she  sat  for  half  an  act  silent  in  a  chair.  She  is 
a  young  woman  who  will  bear  watching.  The 
play  was  staged  perfectly  and  went  without  a 
hitch.  It  was  such  a  performance  as  any 
theatre  might  be  proud  of. 

It  remains  to  add  that  "  Don  "  was  preceded 
by  a  "  curtain-raiser,"  bearing  the  atrocious 
title  of  "  Liz,  the  Mother,"  written  by  the  auth- 
ors of  "  'op  o'  Me  Thumb,"  once  acted  by 
Maude  Adams.  It,  also,  is  a  sketch  of  cockney 
slum  life,  which  does  n't  get  much  of  anywhere, 
is  intended  to  be  very  touching,  and  is  only 
rather  sentimentally  ridiculous.  Miss  Annie 
Russell  and  Miss  Lawton  were  chiefly  con- 
cerned in  the  performance.  They  went  about 
the  stage  dropping  their  h's  and  hugging  prop- 
erty babies.  Both  babies  had  the  same  father, 
which  was  interesting.  One  of  the  babies  was 
dead,  which  was  even  more  interesting.  The 
mother  of  the  dead  baby  —  Miss  Lawton  — 
was  the  wife  of  this  mutual  father.  She  wanted 
to  swap  babies  —  a  dead  for  a  quick  one.  But 
Miss  Russell,  as  Liz,  refused,  thereby  suggest- 
ing her  loyalty  to  papa.  Her  refusal,  you  were 
to  assume,  would  cost  her  a  home,  as  her  family 
refused  any  longer  to  have  the  live  and  hungry 
infant  around.  Just  why  this  maudlin  affair 
was  staged  at  the  New  Theatre  is  a  mystery. 
However,  "  Don  "  soon  made  one  forget  it. 


58  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

SALEM  VIA  SCANDINAVIA 

New  Theatre,  February  14,  19 10 

In  its  original  form  "  The  Witch  "  was  a 
Scandinavian  drama  by  H.  Wicrs-Jenssen,  pre- 
sumably about  peasant  life  and  superstitions; 
it  was  also  probably  a  show  piece  for  an  actress. 
In  its  adapted  form  at  the  New  Theatre  it  sug- 
gests nothing  so  much  as  a  trip  by  Sardou  to 
Salem,  Massachusetts,  where  he  was  alike  im- 
pressed with  the  blood-curdling  dramatic  pos- 
sibilities of  witchcraft  persecutions  in  the  year 
1692  and  depressed  by  the  prevailing  puritan- 
ism  of  the  place.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Eng- 
lish adaptation  has  been  made  by  Hermann 
Hagedorn,  an  instructor  in  English  in  Harvard 
University,  who  enjoys  some  local  celebrity  as 
a  poet  in  the  regions  round  the  Hub. 

In  transferring  the  scenes  of  "  The  Witch  " 
from  Scandinavia  to  Salem,  Massachusetts,  and 
transforming  the  characters  from  peasants  to 
Puritans,  something  appears  to  have  been  lost; 
at  least,  something  is  not  there  after  the  trans- 
fer process  which  is  more  or  less  essential  to 
a  successful  play  —  namely,  interest,  humanity, 
passion,  life,  charm,  credibility  and  the  like. 
If  these  things  were  not  in  the  original,  why 
produce  it  at  all?  If  they  were,  why  sacrifice 
them  by  the  silly  experiment  of  "  adapting  "  the 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  59 

drama  into  an  American  setting?  If  a  foreign 
play  is  good  enough  to  be  played  at  all  at  the 
New  Theatre,  it  is  good  enough  to  be  played  in 
the  best  possible  translation,  as  it  was  conceived 
and  written  by  its  author.  Fancy  adapting 
Ibsen's  "  Hedda  Gabler  "  to  Harlem,  or  Suder- 
mann's  ''  Magda  "  to  Evanston,  Illinois !  And 
if  it  is  not  good  enough  to  be  played  at  the  New 
Theatre  as  its  author  wrote  it,  then  it  is  n't 
good  enough  to  be  played  at  all.  If  the  New 
Theatre  is  going  to  do  anything  for  an  in- 
creased understanding  of  foreign  drama,  it 
won't  be  by  showing  us  mangled  foreign 
drama ;  and  if  it  is  going  to  do  anything  for  an 
increased  understanding  of  native  drama,  it 
is  most  decidedly  not  by  grafting  a  foreign  plot 
and  motives  upon  a  native  setting  and  calling 
the  product  American.  Possibly  there  is  a  good 
play  in  Salem  witchcraft,  (there  must  be,  since 
none  has  ever  come  out),  but  it  will  not  be 
found  by  going  to  Salem  via  Norway  and 
Sweden.  You  go  seventeen  miles  northeast  of 
Boston  by  train  or  trolley.  This  present  play 
is  neither  one  thing  nor  the  other,  neither  con- 
tinental drama  nor  American  history.  It  is 
chiefly  a  waste  of  good  human  effort. 

These  words  are  not  the  quibble  of  a  carping 
critic;  they  are  not  unimportant.  The  prin- 
ciple at  stake  is  an  important  one,  involving  not 
only  the  question  of  artistic  sincerity  in  the 


GO  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

treatment  of  foreign  work,  but  also  the  still 
graver  question  of  sincerity  toward  our  own 
drama  and  our  own  history.  The  attempts  to 
put  the  New  England  Puritan  on  the  stage  have 
not  been  many,  considering  the  importance  he 
played  in  our  national  history.  Truth  to  tell, 
he  was  more  admirable  to  read  about  and  to  be 
descended  from  than  to  watch  and  to  live  with, 
even  for  the  space  of  an  evening.  But,  if  he 
was  narrow,  bigoted,  harsh,  introspective,  the 
apotheosis  of  Calvinism,  he  was  yet  a  very  real 
person,  a  large,  deep-smouldering,  passionate 
man.  He  believed  in  God  hard,  and  he  be- 
lieved in  hell  hard,  in  a  personal  devil.  When 
the  superstition  of  witchcraft,  which  has  taken 
spasmodic  hold  on  mankind  from  the  most 
primitive  ages  up  to  the  present  —  witness  the 
*'  malicious  animal  magnetism  "  of  the  Chris- 
tian Scientists  of  to-day  —  hit  Salem,  Massa- 
chusetts, in  the  last  decades  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  Puritan  gave  to  this  primitive 
superstition  a  profound  religious  sanction,  and 
through  all  the  fanatic  excesses  of  that  terrible 
time  Salem  witchcraft  was  a  different,  and,  one 
may  almost  say,  a  more  dignified  thing  than  the 
witchcraft  persecutions  of  the  peasants  of  such 
a  land  as  Scandinavia  two  centuries  ago.  It 
was  so  different  that  it  does  not  rightfully  be- 
long as  dramatic  material  to  the  Sardous  of  the 
stage.    It  belongs,  rightfully,  not  to  the  stage  at 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  61 

all,  but  to  the  historians  and  students  of  anthro- 
pologic religious  phenomena.  But  if  the  dra- 
matist must  tackle  the  Puritans  of  Salem,  to 
win  any  measure  of  truth  and  reality  he  must 
treat  them  with  profound  respect. 

Alas,  we  all  know  the  Puritan  who  talks  like 
a  log  of  wood  and  acts  like  a  poker,  in  our  oc- 
casional plays  and  historical  novels!  In  spite 
of  Hawthorne,  this  superstition  persists,  like 
witchcraft  itself.  The  Puritan  mothers  are  all 
gloomy  and  depressed,  presumably  from  liv- 
ing with  the  Puritan  fathers,  and  the  Puritan 
fathers  are  all  unhuman  beings  with  a  vocabu- 
lary that  never  was  on  sea  or  land.  Such  a 
one  Cotton  Mather,  the  New  England  divine, 
is  represented  sometimes  as  being.  Such  are 
all  the  characters  in  "  The  Witch,"  when  they 
are  not  palpably  Scandinavians  decked  out 
in  colonial  costume.  But  listen  to  this  pas- 
sage from  Cotton  Mather's  relation  of  his  wife's 
death : 

"  When  I  saw  to  what  a  point  of  resignation  I 
was  now  called  of  the  Lord  I  resolved,  with  His 
help,  therein  to  glorify  Him.  So  two  hours  before 
my  lovely  consort  expired  I  kneeled  by  her  bedside 
and  I  took  into  my  two  hands  a  dear  hand,  —  the 
dearest  in  the  world.  With  her  thus  in  my  hands 
I  solemnly  and  sincerely  gave  her  up  unto  the  Lord ; 
and  in  token  of  my  real  resignation  I  gently  put 
her  out  of  my  hands  and  laid  away  a  most  lovely 


62  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

hand,  resolving  that  I  would  never  touch  it  more. 
This  was  the  hardest  and  perhaps  the  bravest  ac- 
tion that  I  ever  did.  She  told  me  that  she  signed 
and  sealed  my  act  of  resignation.  And  though  be- 
fore that  she  called  for  me  continuously,  she  after 
this  never  asked  for  me  any  more." 

You  may  fare  far  before  you  will  find  any- 
thing in  the  whole  range  of  human  expression 
more  touching-ly  simple  than  this.  Here  is 
a  man  speaking,  a  man  tender,  devout,  deep- 
hearted.  And  he  was  the  very  man  who  led  the 
attack  on  witchcraft  culminating  in  the  Salem 
hangings  in  1692. 

That  there  was  at  that  period,  not  only  in 
New  England  but  in  Europe,  a  remarkable 
outcropping  of  what  we  would  now  call 
"  psychic  phenomena,"  there  can  be  no  doubt. 
So  far  as  "  The  Witch,"  either  in  its  original 
form  or  in  Mr.  Hagedorn's  adaptation,  tries  to 
show  that  the  so-called  manifestations  of  witch- 
craft were  really  such  phenomena,  it  is  to  be 
commended.  But  when  the  play,  as  it  does  in 
the  adaptation,  tangles  up  this  explanation  in 
a  hopelessly  unscientific  and  inexplicable  man- 
ner with  a  crowd  of  ignoramuses  in  Puritan 
shovel  hats,  makes  them  not  religious  fanatics 
of  spiritual  power  and  intellectual  force  and 
even  of  deep  human  feeling,  but  mean,  snarling, 
persecuting   bullies,    and    interweaves   a   love 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  63 

story  wherein  there  is  no  true  tenderness  and 
no  real  passion,  it  is  most  certainly  not  to  be 
commended.  It  is  bad  drama,  it  is  worse 
history,  and  it  is  worst  of  all  in  its  behttling  of 
our  national  past. 

''  The  Witch  "  tells  the  story  of  a  young  wo- 
man of  foreign  birth  married  to  an  elderly 
Salem  minister.  The  chase  of  a  witch  hag  is 
early  shown,  and  we  are  made  acquainted  with 
the  fact  that  the  elderly  pastor,  Absalom  Ha- 
thorne,  has  a  weak  heart.  Gabriel  Hathorne, 
a  grown  son  by  a  former  marriage,  comes  back 
and  falls  in  love  with  his  father's  wife,  and  she 
with  him.  The  wife  yields.  Then  she  learns 
that  she  has  psychic  powers,  through  learning 
that  her  mother  had  them  and  should  have  been 
hung  for  a  witch.  To  be  sure,  the  only  indica- 
tion she  gives  of  possessing  these  powers  is 
that  when  she  wants  Gabriel  to  come  to  her, 
he  walks  into  the  room,  having  but  recently 
stepped  out  into  the  yard !  She  follows  up  this 
remarkable  feat  by  wishing  her  husband  dead, 
and  tells  him  she  has  given  herself  to  Gabriel. 
The  shock  is  too  much  for  his  weak  heart.  He 
dies. 

But  his  Puritan  mother  suspects,  or  at  least 
she  hates.  Bringing  in  all  the  neighbors,  she 
charges  Joan,  the  wife,  with  being  a  witch,  with 
killing  her  husband  by  satanic  aid  and  seducing 
his  son.    Joan  is  told  to  take  the  test,  to  lay  her 


64-  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

hand  on  the  forehead  of  the  corpse.  She  does 
so.  This  is  the  one  really  fine  moment  of  the 
play  —  a  virtuoso  moment  for  the  actress.  As 
her  hand  touches  the  corpse,  there  comes  over 
Joan  the  terrible  influence  in  the  air,  she  is 
literally  hypnotized  by  the  frenzied  condition 
of  the  public  mind  into  a  belief  of  her  guilt. 
She  "  confesses."  She  becomes  a  lunatic. 
The  curtains  close  on  this  horrid  spectacle. 

In  the  drama  as  it  came  to  the  stage  on  Mon- 
day night  there  was  no  emotional  appeal  what- 
ever in  the  Puritan  husband,  nor  in  any  of  the 
Puritan  men  and  women.  They  were  n't  men 
and  women.  They  were  conventional  lay  fig- 
ures. Illicit  love  had  to  be  brought  in  to  give 
the  passion  to  the  piece.  And  to  bring  about 
the  charges  of  witchcraft  against  the  heroine 
not  the  true  motive  of  religious  zeal  was  evoked 
but  a  mother's  savage  spirit  of  revenge  for  her 
son.  This  mother  was  not  Puritan  at  all.  She 
never  existed  in  Salem.  She  was  transplanted 
out  of  Scandinavian  peasant  life,  or  out  of  Guy 
de  Maupassant.  It  was  all  quite  false  and 
futile. 

Mme.  Bertha  Kalich  joined  the  New  Theatre 
company  to  create  the  role  of  "  Goodwife " 
Joan.  (Every  woman  is  a  good  wife  in  the 
Puritan  drama!)  Her  ample  voice  and  large, 
free,  plastic  style  of  gesticulation,  pose  and 
facial   play,   fit   well   the   vast   spaces   of   this 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  65 

theatre,  where  only  a  large  style  will  reach 
the  galleries;  and  she  can,  furthermore,  sug- 
gest with  great  poignancy  both  illicit  passion 
smouldering  fiercely  and  tortured  suspense. 
But  she  was  finest  in  that  finest,  and  final,  mo- 
ment of  the  play,  when,  beside  the  corpse  of  her 
husband,  the  battering  of  superstition  over- 
throws her  reason  and  her  resistance  and  she 
becomes  a  drooling  lunatic,  foredoomed  to  the 
horrid  black  tree  on  Witches'  Hill.  In  an  un- 
real play,  no  player  can  quite  bring  a  part  to 
life,  but  Mme.  Kalich  did  as  much  with  this  one 
as  it  is  probable  the  play  permitted.  For 
the  rest,  they  had  stilted  lines  to  speak,  and  they 
spoke  them  with  a  wearisome  sing-song  which 
would  seem  to  suggest  that  Methodism  came 
into  the  world  a  century  earlier  than  we  had 
supposed. 

Such  is  the  stage  Puritan.  It  is  no  wonder 
he  was  persecuted  in  England.  There  was  one 
exception,  the  fat  clerk  of  the  Salem  Court, 
played  by  William  McVay.  He  was  a  bibulous 
person  who  developed  a  distinct  vein  of  skepti- 
cism toward  witchcraft  with  the  increase  of  his 
vinous  cheer.  This  is  the  first  time  we  had 
recognized  a  connection  between  rationalism 
and  rum.  It  was  a  cheering  thought.  We 
sought  the  basement  during  the  next  inter- 
mission. 


66  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

BRIDEGROOMS     AND     THE    FRENCH 
REVOLUTION 

New  Theatre,  February  28,  19 10 

A  Strange  thing  happened  at  the  New  Thea- 
tre on  February  28,  19 10.  The  subscribers  of 
that  institution  found  themselves  occupying  the 
proud  position  of  dogs,  usually  reserved  for  the 
audiences  in  New  Haven,  Connecticut,  or  Provi- 
dence, Rhode  Island.  John  Mason  and  a  sup- 
porting company  which  did  not  include  a  single 
member  of  the  New  Theatre  organization  were 
allowed  to  try  out  a  play  which  is  not  to  be- 
come part  of  the  New  Theatre  repertoire.  As 
the  play,  "  A  Son  of  the  People,"  stiffly  trans- 
lated from  the  German  translation  of  Sophus 
Michaelis'  Danish  original,  "  A  Revolutionary 
Wedding,"  was  of  slight  interest  and  less 
value,  and  as  the  supporting  company  was 
neither  good  in  itself  nor  at  home  on  the  New 
Theatre  stage,  the  subscribers  were  not  gain- 
ers, however  much  Mr.  Mason  and  his  man- 
ager may  have  benefited. 

Doubtless  the  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  the 
managers  of  the  New  Theatre  had  no  new  play 
ready  for  themselves  and  felt  obliged  to  put 
forward  some  novelty.  But  that  does  not  ex- 
cuse them.     If,  with  the  equipment  and  com- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  67 

pany  they  possess,  they  cannot  make  new  pro- 
ductions once  in  two  weeks  when  necessary, 
then  they  are  but  poorly  fitted  as  yet  for  the  task 
of  management.  To  put  upon  their  stage,  at  the 
height  of  their  first  season,  a  poor  play  and  a 
second-rate  company,  as  a  stop  gap,  is  a  hor- 
rible confession  of  inefficiency.  And  to  bore 
still  further  the  already  sorely  tried  subscribers 
to  the  New  Theatre  is  the  worst  thing  which 
could  happen  to  that  institution.  Its  prevailing 
note  now  is  too  frequently  dulness.  To  add 
incompetence  is  almost  a  crime. 

"  A  Son  of  the  People  "  is  ostensibly  a  play 
of  the  French  revolution.  The  familiar  ingredi- 
ents are  all  present  —  an  army  of  citizen  supers, 
wearing  tri-colored  breeches  and  the  republi- 
can cockade,  a  band  to  play  the  Marseillaise  oflf 
stage  and  two  or  three  aristocrats  to  take  out 
and  shoot,  their  arms  held  behind  them  by  the 
citizen  supers.  But  *'  A  Son  of  the  People  "  is 
spiced  with  an  idea,  not  an  idea,  perhaps,  which 
one  would  expound  at  an  evangelical  mid-week 
meeting,  but  one  which  might  very  well  serve 
for  entertaining  drama.  It  is  the  idea  of  a  wo- 
man who  finds  on  her  wedding  day  that  her 
bridegroom  is  a  coward,  being  unable  to  for- 
get in  her  presence  that  he  is  to  be  shot  in  the 
morning,  and  who  turns  from  him  to  a  man 
who  is  willing  to  be  shot  in  the  morning  for  the 
sake  of  the  endearments  her  husband  forgoes. 


68  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Possibly  this  is  an  odd  kind  of  a  lady,  and  pos- 
sibly it  is  a  romantic  and  supersusccptible  man 
who  would  be  willing  to  lay  down  his  life  to 
take  the  bridegroom's  place,  particularly  as  he 
never  saw  the  lady  till  supper  time.  But  give 
that  idea  to  D'Annunzio  or  G.  B.  Shaw  —  the 
old  Shaw  —  and  they  would  make  something 
of  it;  the  one  something  tense  and  suggestive 
of  a  leak  in  the  sewer  pipe,  perhaps;  the  other 
an  acid  comedy.  Mr.  Michaelis,  however,  has 
been  able  to  make  only  a  long-winded,  old-fash- 
ioned, turgid,  badly  constructed  melodrama. 
Of  course  the  idea,  per  se,  has  nothing  what- 
ever to  do  with  the  French  revolution.  The 
Marseillaise  has  no  more  real  significance 
than  the  American  flag  in  a  G.  M.  Cohan 
comedy. 

Here  is  the  story  of  "  A  Son  of  the  People  " : 
Alaire  de  L'Estoile,  daughter  of  an  aristocrat, 
living  in  her  ancestral  chateau  near  Conde, 
had  been  pledged  by  her  parents  to  the  Mar- 
quis des  Tressailles.  Almost  at  the  rise  of  the 
curtain  he  comes  to  marry  her.  The  time  is 
April,  1793  ;  Conde  is  near  the  border,  and 
though  the  marquis  is  an  Emigre,  one  of  the 
White  Dragoons,  he  comes  thus  far  in  safety 
with  a  French  and  Austrian  escort.  Left  alone 
with  his  bride  for  the  night  —  he  must  be  away 
to  fight  in  the  morning  —  the  kissing  is  inter- 
rupted by  the  distant  strains  of  the  Marseil- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  69 

laise.  In  come  the  conventional  republicans, 
and  Ernest,  the  marquis,  is  about  to  be  taken 
out  and  shot  when  Citizen  Arron,  one  of  the 
leaders,  interposes,  suggesting  that  he  be  shot 
at  six  in  the  morning.  Give  him  his  night  with 
his  bride,  says  the  kindly  Arron.  To  this  the 
commander,  the  commissioner  of  public  safety, 
consents.  A  guard  is  placed  around  the  house, 
and  the  lovers  are  thus  left  to  "  a  wedding  upon 
a  scaffold."  The  bridegroom  does  not  relish 
the  situation.  He  is  afraid  to  die.  The  thought 
of  death  puts  all  thoughts  of  his  bride  out  of 
his  head.  He  storms  and  weeps  in  abject  cow- 
ardice. The  bride  is  somewhat  piqued.  Evi- 
dently she  has  been  looking  forward  to  this 
momentous  occasion  with  pleasant  expectation. 
She  thinks  her  husband  should  forget  death  for 
his  duty.  When  Citizen  Arron  enters  the  room 
she  pleads  with  him  to  save  her  husband's  life, 
however,  and  offers  him  "  herself  "  if  he  will 
contrive  an  escape.  Citizen  Arron  turns  out  to 
be  a  susceptible  person,  extremely  so.  At  the 
touch  of  her  hand  he  is  overpowered.  He  de- 
clares he  is  turning  traitor  to  the  republic  as 
she  presses  his  fingers.  He  turns  traitor.  He 
exchanges  uniforms  with  the  cringing  Ernest, 
who  makes  good  his  escape,  as  you  are  told  by 
a  maid  servant  watching  from  a  window.  Left 
to  die  in  place  of  the  husband,  gallant  Citizen 
Arron  turns  toward  the  lady  for  his  reward. 


70  AT    THE    NEW    .THEATRE 

But,  having  achieved  her  purpose,  the  lady 
has  no  intention  —  at  least,  she  says  she  has  n't, 
but  you  are  not  wholly  convinced  —  of  fulfilling 
her  promise.  She  goes  into  her  room  and  bars 
the  door.  Citizen  Arron  bides  his  time  and 
takes  a  nap  in  a  Louis  XVI  chair.  The  lady 
comes  back.  She  wants  to  know  if  it  is  really 
true  that  he  will  be  shot  by  his  own  men  in  the 
morning.  He  assures  her  that  he  will  be,  and 
his  own  conscience  would  make  him  insist  upon 
it,  anyhow.  She  is  still  skeptical,  so  he  sends 
for  the  commissioner,  and,  while  the  lady  hides 
behind  a  screen,  he  tells  the  commissioner  what 
he  has  done.  That  functionary  assures  him  that 
he  may  be  quite  at  ease  in  his  mind  —  the  exe- 
cution will  be  carried  out.  Departing,  he  is 
heard  doubling  the  sentry. 

Then  the  lady  comes  forth.  Her  husband, 
facing  death  in  the  morning,  had  forgotten  her. 
This  other  man,  this  sturdy  Citizen  Arron,  at 
one  touch  of  her  hand,  had  jauntily  accepted 
death  for  her  promises.  Could  a  lady  be  un- 
moved by  such  proof  of  devotion ?  "I  love 
you  !  "  cries  the  Lady  Alaire,  precipitating  her- 
self upon  the  now  aristocratically  clad  republi- 
can bosom  of  the  Citizen  Arron. 

The  third,  and  last,  act  takes  place  at  the  un- 
witching  hour  of  five  A.  M.  Citizen  Arron  en- 
ters from  the  chamber.  He  is  now  in  a  funk  of 
terror,  too  —  quite  as  fearful  of  death  as  the 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  71 

other  man  had  been.  But  the  lady  is  still  asleep 
and  does  not  know  it.  Indeed,  she  does  n't  find 
it  out  —  and  a  good  stroke  of  ironic  comedy  is 
lost.  She  rises  to  beg  him  to  fly  by  a  secret 
passage  which  for  some  strange  reason  she  did 
not  remember  the  night  before,  but  he  refuses. 
He  must  expiate  what  he  has  done  to  the  re- 
pubHc.  Then  enter  the  soldiers.  They  are 
about  to  shoot  when  the  commissioner  forbids, 
crying  that  he  pardons  Citizen  Arron.  But 
Citizen  Arron,  like  a  true  dramatic  critic, 
spurns  the  happy  ending.  He  runs  to  the  open 
window  and  the  sentries  outside  shoot  him 
down.  Then  the  band  plays  the  Marseillaise 
again.    All  is  o'er. 

It  may  be  gathered  from  this  brief  epitome 
of  the  play  that  its  love  motives  suggest,  as 
Henry  James  once  said  of  the  works  of  Gabriel 
D'Annunzio,  "  the  most  mimetic  department  of 
a  menagerie."  Of  course,  the  marquis  had  mar- 
ried the  lady  by  parental  assignment,  as  it  were, 
and  her  love  for  him  was  not  a  burning  and  true 
passion.  Still,  the  abrupt  transfer  of  her  affec- 
tions between  sunset  and  late  supper  time  from 
the  aristocrat  to  Citizen  Arron,  whom  she  had 
never  seen  before  in  her  life,  could  hardly  be 
explained  even  by  the  fact  that  the  marquis  was 
a  coward  in  the  face  of  death  and  Citizen  Arron 
was  n't,  unless  she  was  at  least  a  second  cousin 
of  a  D'Annunzio  heroine.  But  Mr.  D'Annunzio 


72  AT    THE    NEW    TPIEATRE 

did  n't  write  *'  A  Son  of  the  People."  It  was 
written  by  an  evidently  belated  disciple  of 
SardoLi.  That  is  sufficient  to  say  of  it.  It  has 
no  value  as  a  picture  of  the  French  revolution, 
nor  as  a  study  in  psychology;  and  it  is  not 
well  enough  constructed  to  interest  as  a  "  well 
made  play  "  —  it  has  not  the  compactness  and 
speed. 

To  act  this  piece  with  any  effectiveness  would 
require  a  romantic,  physical  dare-devil  as 
Arron,  and  a  Bernhardt  as  the  lady.  John 
Mason,  who  played  Arron,  is  an  expert  and 
polished  player,  with  an  elocutionary  method 
equal  even  to  the  trying  spaces  of  the  New 
Theatre.  But  he  does  not  suggest  romantic 
dare-deviltry  nor  consuming  youthful  physical 
passion.  Miss  Katherine  Kaelred  played  the 
lady.  She,  it  may  be  recalled,  recently  amused 
the  sophisticated  as  the  rag  and  the  bone  and 
the  hank  of  hair  in  the  hifalutin  drool,  *'A 
Fool  There  Was."  At  the  New  Theatre  it  ap- 
peared that  she  was  trying  to  make  the  Lady 
Alaire  a  sweet  virgin  filled  with  new  love  for 
Citizen  Arron.  The  part  is  not  entirely  open  to 
that  interpretation,  if  it  is  to  be  humanly  com- 
prehensible. However,  the  role  is  full  of  Sar- 
dou  moments  —  pleading,  seduction,  defiance, 
scorn,  love,  the  whole  bag  of  tricks  —  ,  and  poor 
Miss  Kaelred  tried  to  Sardoudle.  She  made 
but  a  sorry  job  of  it. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  7S 

"SISTER  BEATRICE"  AND  "BRAND" 
New  Theatre,  March  14,  1910 

There  are  certain  things  in  the  dramatic 
world  which  seem  to  have  become  invested 
with  a  portentous  and  depressing  solemnity. 
Among  them  are  religion,  poetic  drama,  and 
the  New  Theatre. 

Actually,  of  course,  religious  faith  brings 
more  often  happiness  and  peace  than  gloom  — 
at  least,  to  its  possessor.  A  soul  and  a  sense 
of  humor  have  more  than  once  been  known  to 
dwell  in  the  same  body.  Actually,  of  course, 
the  poetic  drama  has  its  lights  and  shadows  no 
less  than  prose ;  goes  to  the  same  mixed  tempo. 
It  is  not  poetry  because  it  is  sing-sung  at  a 
funereal  pace.  The  difference  between  Mozart 
and  Cohan  is  not  one  of  tempo,  nor  between 
Shakespeare  and  Channing  Pollock.  And  ac- 
tually, of  course,  the  New  Theatre,  if  it  is  to 
succeed  and  fill  a  place  in  popular  interest 
and  good  will,  can  no  more  afford  to  bore  its 
audiences  than  any  other  theatre. 

These  remarks  are  inspired  by  the  produc- 
tion at  the  New  Theatre  of  the  fourth 
act  of  Ibsen's  "Brand"  (condensed)  and  of 
Maeterlinck's  morality  play  —  written  as  a 
libretto  —  "  Sister  Beatrice."  The  portentous 
solemnity    of    the    traditional    stage    attitude 


74  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

toward  representations  of  religion  and  of  poetic 
drama  was  not  lacking,  and  the  tendency  toward 
ponderous  heaviness  of  the  New  Theatre  was  ex- 
emplified by  placing  on  one  evening's  bill  two 
pieces  without  contrast  or  relief,  both  ending 
in  death,  and  unduly  straining  the  attention  of 
the  auditors. 

The  present  writer  once  visited  the  rooms  of 
a  famous  runner  and  saw  a  vast  array  of  cups 
and  medals.  On  one  shelf  were  the  firsts,  on 
another  the  seconds  and  thirds.  Pointing  to  the 
latter  the  runner  said,  "  Those  are  my  fail- 
ures." It  is  in  this  sense  that  the  New  Theatre's 
production  of  "  Sister  Beatrice  "  may  be  called 
a  failure.  With  the  one  woman  best  fitted  to 
play  the  title  part,  Miss  Edith  Wynne  Matthi- 
son,  with  the  most  beautiful  scenery  shown  on 
the  New  York  stage  in  the  writer's  memory, 
with  a  company  quite  adequate  for  all  the  needs 
of  the  minor  roles,  with  all  needful  mechanical 
equipment  and  accessories  of  costume,  the  pro- 
duction just  missed  its  full  effect,  just  failed 
of  sustaining  a  mood,  which  at  first  it  created. 
And  it  failed  because  Maeterlinck's  special 
stage  directions  were  deliberately  ignored,  and 
instead  of  playing  the  second  act  in  a  mood  of 
joyousness,  under  morning  sunshine,  the  act 
was  played  in  semi-darkness  in  a  mood  of 
conventional  religious  dolorousness.  Thus  the 
whole  play  lacked  variety,  shading  ;  but,  still 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  75 

more,  it  thus  was  tinged  with  artificiahty  and 
lost  its  naive  and  simple  grace. 

To  all  students  of  modern  drama  the  play  is 
doubtless  familiar.  It  is  based  on  one  of  the 
old  Mary  myths  of  the  mediaeval  church  — 
the  myth  used  so  touchingly  by  Adelaide  Proc- 
tor in  "  A  Legend  of  Prov-enge  "  (a  poem  in 
which  the  psychology  is  more  searching  than  in 
Maeterlinck's  play),  and  by  John  Davidson  in 
"  A  Ballad  of  a  Nun."  Maeterlinck  has  made 
a  simple,  straightforward  narrative  for  the 
stage  out  of  the  story,  which  has  little  of  the 
Maeterlinckian  "  static  drama  "  about  it  and 
keeps  even  in  the  stiff  English  translation  of 
Bernard  Miall  the  naive  quality  of  legend. 

The  first  act  is  brief  and  entirely  concerned 
with  Sister  Beatrice's  flight  with  Bellidor,  her 
lover.  The  curtain  rises,  disclosing  the  high, 
bare  stone  walls  of  the  convent,  with  the  huge 
entrance  doors,  now  barred,  in  the  center  and 
the  little  nun  praying  in  the  dim  light  of  the 
lamp  before  the  statue  of  the  Virgin.  Her 
prayer  discloses  her  innocence,  her  love  for 
Bellidor,  her  reluctance  to  desert  the  convent, 
her  pitiful  perplexity.  Then  comes  a  knocking. 
She  throws  open  the  doors  and  Bellidor  stands 
there  in  golden  mail.  Again  she  prays  the 
Virgin  for  a  sign  bidding  her  stay;  but  no  sign 
is  given,  so  she  hangs  her  mantle  and  veil  on 
the  grille  and  goes  out  with  her  lover. 


76  AT    TPIE    NEW    THEATRE 

The  second  act  opens  on  a  vacant  stage.  It 
is  now  full  morning.  The  statue  of  the  Virgin 
comes  to  life,  puts  on  Sister  Beatrice's  costume, 
and  goes  about  her  tasks.  First  she  distributes 
gifts  to  the  poor,  which  are  transformed  as  she 
takes  them  out  of  an  alms  basket  into  wonder- 
ful cloths  of  gold.  Then  the  abbess  and  sisters 
come,  discover  the  vacant  pedestal,  see  the  Vir- 
gin's robes  under  those  of  Sister  Beatrice,  and 
think  the  little  nun  has  robbed  the  sacred  image. 
They  take  her  into  the  chapel  to  scourge  her. 
But  there  a  miracle  comes  to  pass.  Angelic 
voices  peal  out,  flowers  rain  down,  blinding 
lights  flash,  and  the  astonished  nuns  stagger 
back  upon  the  stage,  crying  that  the  Virgin  has 
gone  up  to  heaven  and  left  Sister  Beatrice  in 
her  place. 

In  the  third  act,  twenty  years  later,  Sister 
Beatrice  comes  back,  old  and  worn  with  sin. 
She  returns  in  the  dawn-dark  of  act  one  save  that 
the  scene  is  now  winter.  The  Virgin  is  once 
more  on  her  pedestal,  and  Sister  Beatrice  finds 
her  old  mantle  hanging,  as  she  left  it,  on  the 
grille.  She  puts  it  on  for  warmth.  The  nuns 
come  out  and  find  her  dying.  Their  compas- 
sion amazes  her.  She  tries  to  tell  them 
of  her  sins,  but  they  think  her  confession 
is  prompted  by  the  devil  struggling  with 
her  soul.  She  cannot  make  them  believe 
that   she   ever   left    the   convent   in   all  these 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  77 

twenty  years.  The  Virgin  has  protected  her 
memory,  in  her  infinite  tenderness  and  mercy. 
So  Sister  Beatrice  dies  as  one  of  the  saints. 

Miss  Matthison  possesses  the  beautiful,  ex- 
pressive face,  the  tender,  deep  voice,  and  the 
plastic,  graceful  bearing  perfectly  to  realize 
such  a  part  in  such  a  legend.  The  wistful  in- 
nocence of  her  opening  prayer  struck  the  mood 
at  once,  and  when  she  threw  open  the  door  to 
disclose  Prince  Bellidor  in  golden  mail  stand- 
ing against  a  night-blue  landscape  where  purple 
headlands  showed  through  a  ghostly  fringe  of 
young  birches  and  the  morning  star  twinkled 
in  the  sky,  the  audience  gasped  for  very  joy  of 
the  picture,  a  picture  as  illusive,  as  other- 
worldly, as  persuasive  as  any  pre-Raphaelite 
canvas. 

But  the  stage  directions  indicate  that  the 
lovers  go  out  into  the  dawn.  There  was  no 
dawn  at  the  New  Theatre.  The  curtain  was 
not  even  dropped.  Miss  Matthison  made  her 
way  into  the  niche  where  the  statue  of  the  Vir- 
gin stood,  under  cover  of  darkness,  and  came 
to  life  by  lamplight.  In  subsequent  speeches, 
of  course,  all  the  references  to  the  sun  had  to  be 
cut  out.  When  she  distributed  the  garments 
to  the  poor  it  was  in  a  melancholy  manner,  and 
none  of  the  poor  "  rushed  off  with  glad  cries," 
as  indicated  by  the  text.  There  was  none  of 
the  Virgin's  joy  of  charity.     And  this,  proba- 


78  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

bly,  was  because  there  was  no  joy  of  sunlight 
and  because  Miss  Matthison  had  not  been  asked 
to  play  the  scene  joyously. 

Why  was  there  no  sunlight?  Simply  in  or- 
der that  a  light  might  be  cast  up  from  the  alms 
basket  to  illuminate  the  garments  as  the  Virgin 
lifted  them  out.  But  this  could  have  been  ac- 
complished by  putting  the  basket  in  a  heavy 
shadow,  surely.  Later,  when  the  nuns  discover 
the  supposed  theft  from  the  image,  Miss 
Matthison's  face  was  illumined  with  a  benign 
patience,  a  sweet,  glad  loveliness,  that  was  any- 
thing but  dolorous.  Again,  when  the  nuns  burst 
back  from  the  miracle  in  the  chapel,  the  reason 
for  the  New  Theatre's  plan  of  playing  this  act 
in  darkness  became  still  more  apparent.  The 
shower  of  flowers  was  indicated  by  dropping 
tinsel  confetti  down  through  a  blaze  of  calcium 
light,  and  the  miracle  was  further  pictured  by  a 
mighty  escape  of  steam,  quite  like  a  Wagnerian 
opera.  After  all,  such  mechanical  contrivances 
have  little  part  in  so  simple  a  legend.  They 
make  it  seem  artificial.  Let  flowers  be  scattered 
by  unseen  hands,  let  hidden  voices  peal,  and 
let  the  faces  of  the  nuns  and  still  more  the  face 
of  Miss  Matthison  —  undimmed  l)y  escaping 
steam  —  express  the  miracle,  and  your  audi- 
ence will  believe  it  much  more  readily.  More- 
over, the  bright  atmosphere  of  sunlight  is  abso- 
lutely needed  in  this  second  act  to  symbolize 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  79 

the  joy  and  mercy  of  the  Virgin  as  -well  as  to 
relieve  the  monotony  of  the  play  and  afford  the 
necessary  contrast.  The  old  myth  is  not  truly 
rendered  without  the  touch  of  morning  fresh- 
ness and  the  golden  light  of  the  new  day. 
This  is  even  more  the  case  since  Maeterhnck 
wrote  "  Sister  Beatrice  "  as  a  libretto,  depend- 
ing on  orchestral  tone  coloring  to  heighten 
many  of  his  effects.  To  the  eye  a  dark  stage 
and  spot  lights  produce  the  exact  opposite  of 
the  effect  intended  here,  which  is  joy  and 
ecstatic  wonder. 

"  Sister  Beatrice  "  was  preceded  by  a  produc- 
tion of  act  four  of  "  Brand,"  from  which  the 
long  scene  between  Brand  and  the  mayor  was 
omitted,  since  it  is  unintelligible  without  the 
rest  of  the  play.  Some  people  seemed  to  find 
what  remained  of  the  act  unintelligible ;  and  it 
is  not,  of  course,  fully  clear,  since  it  is  but  one 
more  cruel  episode  in  Brand's  spiritual  strug- 
gle. Yet,  even  if  you  do  not  know  that  the  little 
dead  baby  out  under  the  snow  was  killed  that 
Brand  could  school  his  will  and  give  God  "  all 
or  nothing,"  and  are  not  certain  whether  this 
stern  preacher  is  meant  as  man  or  monster,  still 
the  act  tingles  with  a  dramatic  life  of  its  own, 
and  is  sufficiently  harrowing.  Possibly  at  such 
a  house  as  the  New  Theatre  it  ought  to  be  safe 
to  assume,  also,  that  the  audience  is  not  un- 
familiar with  Ibsen's  poem.     There  is  conti- 


80  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

nental  precedent  for  playing  this  act  separately, 
at  any  rate. 

As  to  the  production,  little  need  be  said. 
Miss  Annie  Russell  played  Agnes,  and  she 
whined  and  moaned  quite  ineffectually,  while 
Lee  Baker,  as  Brand,  delivered  his  speeches  in 
a  kind  of  sing-song,  and  lacked  the  suggestion 
of  spiritual  fanaticism  necessary  to  a  plausible 
picture  of  the  part.  It  was  a  doleful  procedure, 
not  a  tragic  nor  significant  one.  It  caused  no 
cries  for  the  rest  of  the  play. 


"  THE  WINTER'S  TALE  "  WITHOUT 
SCENERY 

New  Theatre,  March  28,  19 10 

The  New  Theatre  began  its  first  season  with 
the  dullest  performance  of  "  Antony  and  Cleo- 
patra "  ever  witnessed,  but  with  scenery  of 
great  magnificence.  It  closed  its  first  season 
(so  far  as  the  regular  company  was  concerned) 
wdth  a  fine  and  spirited  performance  of  "  The 
Winter's  Tale,"  with  practically  no  scenery  at 
all.    Thus  we  see  that  actors  do  have  their  uses. 

There  have  been  many  attempts  in  recent 
years  to  reproduce  Elizabethan  stage  condi- 
tions. Among  the  most  successful  from  the 
strictly  historical  point  of  view  were  possibly 
those  at  Harvard  College,  where  most  recently 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  81 

Miss  Adams  acted  "Twelfth  Night."  The 
stage  at  Sanders  Theatre  thrusts  out  into  the 
auditorium,  and  it  was  there  possible  to  con- 
struct reproductions  of  the  Elizabethan  boxes, 
running  round  on  the  sides  and  almost  be- 
hind the  stage,  which  were  filled  with  stu- 
dents dressed  as  young  London  blades  of  the 
period.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  neither  at 
Harvard  nor  in  the  Ben  Greet  revivals,  was  the 
probable  richness  of  the  Elizabethan  stage  re- 
produced. Rich  in  scenery  it  was  not,  though 
there  w^as  possibly  a  little  scenery  placed  in  the 
alcove  to  suggest  location.  But  recent  research 
has  pretty  clearly  proved  that  it  was  rich  in  cos- 
tuming, and  that  the  solid  architectural  back- 
ground of  balconies,  pillars,  and  tapestries  was 
impressively  luxurious.  The  Elizabethans  cer- 
tainly liked  bright  and  beautiful  things,  and 
the  Elizabethan  theatre  could  certainly  afford 
them.  Shakespeare  was  not  the  only  actor- 
manager  who  retired  wealthy.  The  Elizabethan 
playhouse  was  not  a  barn,  then,  nor  so  capar- 
isoned. By  staging  "  The  Winter's  Tale " 
against  a  rich  background  of  mediaeval  tapes- 
tries and  architectural  detail,  and  by  dressing 
the  players  richly  with  costumes  of  Shake- 
speare's time,  the  New  Theatre  has  relieved 
the  so-called  Elizabethan  stage  of  that  bareness 
and  poverty  we  have  associated  with  it,  warm- 
ing it  into  sensuous  appeal. 


82  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Of  course,  in  Shakespeare's  time,  boys  and 
men  played  all  ihc  female  parts.    Of  course,  the 
stage,  however  large,  was  restricted  for  pur- 
poses of  grouping  by  the  presence  of  spectators 
and  the  lack  of  a  proscenium  frame.    Of  course, 
the  performance  took  place  by  daylight,  and  the 
acting  was  probably  on  a  far  different  key  of 
robust  oratory.    In  a  sense,  it  is  impossible  now 
to  reproduce  the  Elizabethan  stage,  even  had 
we  fuller  knowledge  of  it.    Much  ink  has  been 
spilled  over  the  question  whether  it  is  worth 
while  trying.  Some  critics  point  out,  quite  truly, 
that  Shakespeare  would  have  utilized  scenery 
if  he  had  possessed  it.     No  doubt  he  would. 
But,  if  he  had  possessed  scenery,  he  would  have 
written  his  plays  in  five  scenes  instead  of  fif- 
teen, and  he  would  have  dispensed  with  most  of 
his  lyric  embellishments  of  descriptive  poetry. 
Let  us  rejoice  that  he  did  not  possess  scenery, 
that  there  was  no  Belasco  in  Elizabeth's  Eng- 
land!   The  real  object  of  the  modern  reversion 
to  the  supposed  Elizabethan  stage  is  not  to 
make  an  absolutely  accurate  archaeological  re- 
production, but  so  to  mount  the  play  that  it 
may  be  acted  in  its  textual  integrity,  and  to 
create  illusion  by  the  acting  and  the  verse,  not 
by  means  which  were  foreign  to  Shakespeare. 
If  such  a  modern  revival  pr*eserves  the  text  of 
the  plav  and  creates  the  illusion,  without  be- 
littling the  work,  without  making  it  seem  tamer 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  83 

or  less  poetic,  then  it  has  accomplished  its  pur- 
pose well. 

And  the  New  Theatre's  revival  of  "  The 
Winter's  Tale  "  does  just  that. 

Miss  Adams'  revival  of  "Twelfth  Night," 
by  the  bareness  of  the  stage  —  and  also  by  the 
quality  of  the  acting  —  belittled  the  play.  This 
present  revival  of  "  The  Winter's  Tale,"  by 
the  simple  richness  of  its  tapestried  setting  and 
still  more  by  the  glowing,  harmonious  colors 
of  its  costumes  and  the  uniform  dignity  of  its 
acting,  preserves  all  the  rich,  romantic  glamor 
of  the  fable,  while  adding  the  immeasurable  ad- 
vantage of  swiftness  of  movement,  absence  of 
"  waits,"  the  illusion  of  verse  rather  than  scen- 
ery, and  textual  completeness,  so  that  the  story 
seems  almost  for  the  first  time  on  the  modern 
stage  unified  and  comprehensible.  To  a  spec- 
tator with  imagination  the  illusion  is  much 
more  nearly  perfect  without  scenery  than  with 
it.  To  such  a  spectator  Shakespeare's  pen  was 
more  potent  than  any  scene  painter's  brush. 
To  a  mind  utterly  dependent  on  the  habitual  aids 
to  illusion  this  revival  may  prove  unsatisfac- 
tory. To  the  mind  capable  of  doing  its  own  work 
it  will  prove  a  treat.  The  real  quarrel  over  the 
revival  of  the  Elizabethan  stage  is,  after  all, 
a  quarrel  between  these  two  types  of  mind. 

But  of  course  the  acting  of  the  New  Theatre 
company  has  much  to  do  with  the  satisfactory 


84  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

result  of  this  revival.  It  is  easily  the  best  act- 
ing in  a  classic  seen  at  the  playhouse  during  the 
season.  It  is  more  unified,  pitched  to  a  higher 
key;  that  key  is  more  the  key  of  romantic  ro- 
bustness —  though  still  not  quite  robust 
enough ;  and  the  difficulties  of  delivering  blank 
verse  are  more  successfully  overcome.  The 
presence  in  the  cast  as  Hermione  of  Miss  Edith 
Matthison  naturally  has  the  largest  share  in 
this  happy  outcome.  Next  to  Miss  Matthison, 
Miss  Rose  Coghlan,  an  actress  long  ago  trained 
in  such  roles,  playing  Paulina,  lifts  the  drama 
into  the  regions  of  high  romantic  poetry.  Lit- 
tle Miss  Bateman-Hunter,  the  incarnation  of 
youthful  beauty  and  innocence,  ranks  next  per- 
haps, for  though  she  cannot  yet  read  the  im- 
mortal speech  about  the  ''  daffodils  that  come 
before  the  swallow  dares,"  and  make  it  tell  in 
all  its  haunting  loveliness  and  magic,  yet  her 
Perdita  is  artless  without  simper,  charming 
without  affectation,  as  utterly  girlish  as  most 
of  the  Perditas  of  the  famous  actresses  who 
"  double  "  the  role  with  Hermione  have  been 
theatrically  sophisticated. 

Miss  Matthison's  queen  is,  vocally  and  dra- 
matically, regal  and  beautiful.  The  nobility  of 
her  bearing,  the  pure  pathos  of  her  protesta- 
tions of  chastity,  the  tragic  grief  of  the  mother 
at  the  supposed  loss  of  her  child,  and  finally  the 
benignity  and  sweetness  of  wifely  forgiveness 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  85 

expressed  in  her  face  and  her  deep,  poignant 
voice  when  the  statue  comes  to  Hfe,  are  largely, 
simply  and  splendidly  expressed.  Her  elocu- 
tion, of  course,  is  a  treat,  and  her  beauty  when 
she  stands  in  flowing  gray  robes,  under  her 
crown  upon  the  pedestal,  is  something  that  once 
seen  cannot  soon  be  forgot.  No  less  broadly 
effective  is  the  Paulina  of  Miss  Coghlan,  and 
splendid  in  its  suggestion  of  power  in  reserve. 
These  women  of  the  cast  would  alone  make  it 
notable. 

But,  on  the  masculine  side,  Ferdinand  Gott- 
schalk  as  the  clown  and  Albert  Bruning  as 
Autolycus  contribute  comic  portraits  which  are 
at  once  drawn  broadly  and  without  coarseness, 
which  are  at  once  full  of  rollicking  humor  and 
keen  characterization.  Henry  Kolker  as  Leon- 
tes  suffers  from  his  unfortunate  nasal  speech, 
and  some  of  the  other  men  are  too  fearful  of 
"  letting  themselves  go."  But  on  the  wdiole 
they,  too,  are  in  the  swift,  romantic  Eliza- 
bethan spirit  of  this  revival,  if  as  yet  somewhat 
tamely  so. 

The  play  has  been  staged  by  Louis  Calvert 
substantially  without  cuts  in  the  text  and  with 
only  one  intermission,  well  placed  before  the 
first  scene  that  shows  Perdita  grown  to  girl- 
hood. His  groupings,  aided  by  the  beautiful 
costumes,  are  particularly  delightful,  and  he 
has  staged  the  dance  of  the  shepherds  and  shep- 


86  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

herdesses  in  such  wise  that  it  seems  a  true  ex- 
pression of  peasant  joy,  not  a  "  stunt "  of  the 
dancing  teacher.  He  keeps  the  players  well 
to  the  front  of  the  stage  —  which  has  been 
built  out  over  the  orchestra  pit  at  the  New 
Theatre,  a  great  aid  to  the  acoustics  —  and  he 
keeps  well  to  the  front  also  the  primary  motive 
of  this  revival,  the  swift,  illusive,  poetic  narra- 
tion of  Shakespeare's  romantic  fable.  Here  is 
the  play  substantially  as  Shakespeare  conceived 
it,  and  how  much  lovelier  and  more  persuasive 
and  simple  a  thing  it  is  than  the  usual  traffic 
of  the  stage  when  modern  "  spectacle  "  holds 
sway  ! 

"BEETHOVEN  — A    DRAMATIC 
BIOGRAPHY  " 

New  Theatre,  April  ii,  1910. 

"  Beethoven,"  described  as  a  "  dramatic 
biography,"  written  by  Rene  Fauchois  and 
translated  into  English  prose  —  rhymed  and 
unrhymed  —  by  Henry  Grafton  Chapman,  was 
enacted  at  the  New  Theatre  after  the  regular 
season,  with  Donald  Robertson  of  Chicago  play- 
ing the  title  part.  "  Beethoven  "  had  been  origi- 
nally scheduled  for  production  in  season  by  the 
New  Theatre  Com])any,  but  the  subscribers 
were  spared  that  ailliction. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  87 

For  "  Beethoven  "  —  though  it  is  described 
as  a  "  success  "  in  Paris  and  elsewhere  on  the 
Continent  —  is  a  stage  work  which  is  not  Hkely 
to  interest  anyone  but  the  lovers  of  the  great 
composer  and  his  works,  having  absolutely  no 
dramatic  interest  of  its  own ;  and  it  is  not  likely 
to  interest  them  because  it  makes  trivial  and 
even  a  little  ridiculous  a  mighty  musician,  and 
so  is  essentially  false.  Divided  into  three  acts, 
the  play  shows  Beethoven  first  in  Vienna  in 
1809,  at  the  height  of  his  fame,  and  in  love  with 
the  fair  Giulietta  Guiccardi,  who  informs  him 
of  her  betrothal  to  another.  Act  two  shows  him 
some  years  later,  in  love  now  with  Bettina 
Brentano,  who  in  her  turn  informs  him  that 
she  is  about  to  be  married  to  another.  It  also 
shows  him  haunted  by  the  fear  of  his  growing 
deafness ;  and,  finally,  in  the  one  really  effective 
scene  of  the  entire  fabric,  this  deafness  comes 
vividly  upon  him  while  he  is  rehearsing  the 
string  quartet  No.  9.  He  orders  the  musicians 
to  play  louder.  He  seizes  a  fiddle  from  one  of 
them,  yanks  the  bow  over  the  strings,  utters  a 
heart-breaking  cry  as  he  dashes  the  instrument 
to  the  floor,  and  falls  weeping  in  a  heap.  Prob- 
ably the  brooding  genius  of  the  Ninth  Sym- 
phony and  the  great  quartets  never  acted  in 
just  this  theatric  way,  but  we  must  not  expect 
too  much  of  the  drama. 

In  the  last  act  it  is  the  white-haired,  bowed 


88  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

and  dying  Beethoven  whom  we  see,  broken- 
hearted by  the  ingratitude  of  his  nephew,  Karl, 
and  only  consoled  by  the  vision  of  his  nine  sym- 
phonies, which  come  to  him  in  the  shape  of  nine 
yomig  ladies  clad  in  white,  while  an  invisible 
voice  describes  each  one  in  atrocious  verse,  and 
the  New  Theatre  orchestra  plays  a  theme  from 
the  score.  A  spotlight  is  cast  upon  each  one  of 
these  "nine  sweet  symphonies"  (as  Rossetti 
might  have  called  them),  as  her  theme  is 
sounded.  It  is  all  rather  suggestive  of  Coney 
Island  spectacle.  Isadora  Duncan,  gyrating 
barefoot  to  the  measures  of  the  Seventh  Sym- 
phony, belittled  it  less  than  this  exhibition. 

All  through  the  formless,  ambling,  undra- 
matic  fabric,  however,  as  seen  at  the  New  Thea- 
tre, the  great  genius  of  Beethoven  was  belittled. 
Ever  and  anon  the  composer  was  shown  run- 
ning his  fingers  through  his  hair,  beating  time 
with  his  hands,  or  jotting  feverishly  in  a  note- 
book, while  the  invisible  orchestra  played  this 
or  that  famous  theme  from  his  works.  This 
was  supposed,  no  doubt,  to  indicate  the  descent 
of  the  divine  afflatus.  His  love  affairs  were  so 
fragmentarily  indicated  and  treated  in  so 
trivial  a  manner  that  they  tended  to  make  him 
ridiculous;  indeed,  the  audience  tittered  at  the 
second  one.  And  his  outbursts  of  temper  or  of 
self-confident  independence  seemed  the  prompt- 
ings of  conceit,  not  of  genius. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  89 

Partly  these  things  were  due  to  the  play- 
wright, partly  to  the  actor,  but  still  more  to  the 
nature  of  the  subject.  Beethoven  was  a  genius 
whose  drama  was  subjective.  He  carried  within 
his  own  nature  his  joys  and  his  tragedies.  His 
loves  meant  much  to  him,  because  he  glorified 
the  objects  of  his  adoration.  His  life  was  a 
long  struggle  between  accomplishment  and 
vision.  His  tragedy  of  deafness  was  one  which 
only  he  could  fully  comprehend,  because  only 
he  could  hear  with  that  inward  ear  the  har- 
monies which  haunted  him  and  which  he  so 
mightily  yearned  to  test  upon  the  instruments 
of  his  orchestra.  To  make  dramatic  stuff  of 
such  subjective  material  as  this  is  the  task  for 
a  genius  scarcely  less  great  as  a  playwright 
than  Beethoven  as  a  composer.  M.  Fauchois 
is  not  that  genius. 

And  to  invest  the  stage  impersonation  of  such 
a  world  figure  as  Beethoven  with  the  dignity, 
the  suggestion  of  power,  the  serene  self-poise 
successfully  to  convert  a  small  man's  conceit 
into  a  great  man's  prophetic  utterances,  re- 
quires an  actor  of  no  less  a  stature  than  Mans- 
field or  Irving.  Mr.  Robertson  is  not  that 
actor.  His  performance  was  conspicuous  for 
its  clarity  of  enunciation  and  for  its  pictur- 
esque solidity.  But  it  was  totally  deficient  in 
the  quality  of  sympathy ;  it  inspired  no  pity  for 
the  suffering  Beethoven,  being  hard  and  a  trifle 


90  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

monotonous;  and  it  was  deficient,  too,  in  the 
suggestion  of  the  majesty  of  great  inspiration, 
the  dignity  of  genius.  This  play  and  this  per- 
formance of  it  have  not  so  entirely  failed  as 
have  certain  attempts  in  the  past  to  make  stage 
material  out  of  the  lives  of  Beethoven  and  Mo- 
zart. But  they  have  added  nothing  to  popu- 
lar appreciation  of  the  master  and  his  works; 
they  have  not  made  him  a  more  human  figure, 
nor  his  works  more  fraught  with  emotional 
significance.  Failing  in  this,  it  is  hard  to  see 
that  the  New  Theatre  production  of  "  Bee- 
thoven "  has  accomplished  anything  at  all. 


Part   II 


"  THE  EASIEST  WAY  " 

Belasco's  Stuyvesant  Theatre,  January  19,  1909 

THE  real  friends  of  David  Belasco  for 
several  seasons  have  not  been  those 
persons  who  gave  him  fulsome  praise 
and  accorded  him  untempered  adulation.  They 
have  been  those  who  tried  to  point  out  that  by 
his  failure  to  ally  himself  with  dramatists  who 
possess  real  ideas  he  was  letting  the  stage  ad- 
vance beyond  him  and  losing  his  position  as  a 
leader.  And  these  real  friends  were  the  ones 
who  rejoiced  most  heartily  at  the  Stuyvesant 
Theatre,  in  New  York,  when  they  found  that 
Mr.  Belasco  had  allied  himself  at  last  with  an 
author  who  possesses  ideas  and  an  uncompro- 
mising, almost  brutal  passion  for  truth,  Eugene 
Walter,  author  of  "  Paid  in  Full."  On  Janu- 
ary 19,  1909,  Mr.  Belasco  mounted  in  the  heart 
of  the  Tenderloin  Mr.  Walter's  latest  play, 
a  remorseless  study  of  a  pitiful  and  only  too 
common  phase  of  Tenderloin  life,  called 
"  The  Easiest  Way."  He  mounted  the  play 
with  all  his  remarkable  skill  in  the  order- 
ing of  accessories  and  the  manipulation 
of     atmosphere     and     acting.     Yet    it     was 


94.  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

acted  letter  for  letter  as  Mr.  Walter  wrote 
it.  As  a  result  one  of  the  most  significant 
American  plays  of  recent  years  was  per- 
formed in  a  manner  worthy  of  it.  "  The  Easi- 
est Way  "  is  an  American  "  Iris."  Eugene 
Walter  has  shown  himself  in  this  piece  the 
American  Pinero.  The  same  sense  for  theatri- 
cal effectiveness,  the  same  uncompromising 
irony  of  truth,  and  the  same  preoccupation  w4th 
the  grimmer  side  of  the  middle  world  of  urban 
life  —  the  *' half-world  "  of  the  French  —  is 
apparent  in  "The  Easiest  Way"  as  in  "Iris." 
And,  too,  in  Mr.  Walter's  newest  piece  there  is 
an  increasing  attention  to  literary  style,  to  dis- 
tinction of  dialogue.  One  fault  he  has  that  he 
will,  perhaps,  get  over,  and  must  get  over  be- 
fore his  style  will  be  acceptable  to  the  more 
fastidious.  He,  like  the  young  Kipling,  too 
much  enjoys  shocking  his  hearers  with  raw 
remarks  and  needless  profanity  —  truthful  and 
in  character,  no  doubt,  but  really  ineffective. 
Barring  this,  "  The  Easiest  Way  "  is  written 
with  dramatic  fitness  and  distinction,  and  it 
marks  a  long  stride  forward  for  its  author,  and 
for  Mr.  Belasco.  It  places  Mr.  Walter  as  a 
leader  among  our  dramatists,  and  it  restores 
Mr.  Belasco  temporarily,  at  least,  to  a  place 
of  leadership  among  our  managers. 

That  the  play  will  shock  the  prurient,  the 
hypocritical  folk  who  close  up  "  Mrs.  Warren's 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  95 

Profession  "  and  enjoy  any  sort  of  libidinous 
musical  "  show,"  there  is  no  doubt.  But 
morality  or  immorality  in  the  drama  is  a 
matter  of  intention  and  method.  You  can 
tell  the  truth  about  immorality  and  be 
highly  moral.  You  can  also  tell  no  truths 
at  all  and  be  highly  indecent.  It  is  perfectly 
evident  that  Mr.  Walter  has  written  his  play 
with  a  burning  purpose  to  tell  very  unpleasant 
truths  in  a  very  uncompromising  way  for  the 
sake  of  opening  some  people's  eyes,  and  that  he 
has  told  truths  nobody  who  knows  anything 
about  the  Tenderloin  will  attempt  to  deny.  Yet 
they  are  truths  unfortunately  applicable  to  other 
places  than  the  Tenderloin.  The  play  has  uni- 
versal appeal. 

The  story  of  the  play  is  simple.  It  is  that 
of  a  slim,  pretty,  frail,  not  immoral,  but  un- 
moral girl  who  escapes  from  an  early  mar- 
riage to  the  stage,  and  from  that  to  a  rich 
broker  who  "  protects  "  her.  Then  she  falls 
in  love  one  summer  with  a  young  reporter  in 
Denver,  who  goes  to  Goldfield  to  try  to  strike 
a  fortune  while  she  comes  East  to  live  a 
*'  straight "  life  till  he  can  come  and  claim  her. 
The  second  act  shows  her  out  of  a  job,  in  a 
horrible  boarding-house,  down  to  her  last  cent. 
She  is  an  incapable  actress,  one  of  the  kind 
to  whom  certain  managers  only  give  parts 
when  there  is  an  "  angel  "  backing  them;   and 


96  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

this  style  of  manager  is  rudely  pictured.  The 
girl  is  not  strong  fibred  enough  to  stick  out 
the  fight.  She  goes  back  to  the  broker.  But 
he,  who  is  not  painted  in  total  black  but  with 
the  mixed  colors  of  life,  dictates  a  letter  to 
her  to  send  to  her  lover.  She  promises  to 
send  it,  but  she  does  n't.  She  goes  on  writing 
to  her  lover  as  before,  after  she  is  living  again 
with  the  broker. 

Of  course,  the  lover  comes  East  suddenly  to 
claim  her,  and  the  last  two  acts  are  ordered 
with  breathless  suspense  and  masterly  devel- 
opment. The  girl,  incapable  of  telHng  the 
truth,  lies  first  to  the  broker  and  then  to  the 
lover.  The  latter,  believing  her  profession  of 
innocence,  is  about  to  take  her  West  with  him 
when  a  key  clicks  in  the  lock.  The  door  opens. 
The  broker  enters.  No  more  efifective  moment 
has  been  devised  in  recent  drama.  It  is  the 
girl's  total  inability  to  tell  the  truth,  her  total 
failure  to  grasp  the  real  meaning  of  morality, 
that  precludes  any  forgiveness  from  the  lover. 
She  threatens  to  shoot  herself.  He  tells  her 
to  go  ahead,  well  knowing  that  she  has  not 
the  courage.  When  he  has  gone,  she  wails 
in  utter  despair  for  a  moment,  and  then  calls 
feverishly  for  her  hat,  announcing  that  she  is 
going  over  to  Rector's  "  to  raise  hell,"  and  the 
curtain  falls. 

This  story  is  the  story  of  a  life  that  was 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  97 

of  no  consequence  (so  far  as  a  human  life  is 
ever  of  no  consequence),  but  a  life  that 
brought  woe  to  others  and  dull  misery  to  itself. 
This  life  goes  on  after  the  final  curtain  falls, 
goes  on  to  a  conclusion  more  terrible  than  the 
incidents  of  the  play.  This  poor  girl  was  a 
pitifully  weak  vessel  tossed  on  a  cruel  and  re- 
lentless sea.  She  is  presented  with  searching 
truth,  and  her  fate  becomes  important  because 
it  is  the  fate  of  her  kind.  A  certain  type  of 
broker,  a  certain  type  of  musical  comedy  man- 
ager, the  powers  that  prey  in  the  Tenderloin, 
battled  against  her  in  her  hopeless  and  lonely 
struggle  for  an  ethical  salvation.  Doubtless 
somewhere  she  had  a  soul,  but  there  was  no- 
body to  reach  it,  because  there  was  nobody 
to  feed  her  body  except  at  her  body's  price. 
This  is  the  story  of  the  Tenderloin.  This  is 
the  story  of  too  many  department  stores.  This 
is  the  terrible  tale  of  prostitution.  Perhaps 
Mr.  Walter  would  have  us  believe  this  girl 
was  predestined  from  birth  for  her  fate ;  but  we 
cannot  believe  it.  She  was  a  woman.  She  was 
laid,  a  living  sacrifice,  on  the  altar  of  the  Ten- 
derloin —  that  gay  region  of  lamps  and  thea- 
tres, cabs  and  cafes,  mirth  and  merriment.  Pro- 
duced in  the  heart  of  this  region,  "  The  Easiest 
Way  "  is  like  an  ugly  death's  head  suddenly 
revealed  behind  a  grinning  mask  of  comedy. 
There  were  but  six  people  in  the  cast.     Fran- 


98  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

ces  Starr  played  the  part  of  the  Girl,  and  played 
it  as  ''  The  Rose  of  the  Rancho  "  hardly  led  one 
to  hope.  Her  frail,  small  prettiness  fitted  it 
well,  and  her  somewhat  artificial  attempts  to  be 
emotional  in  the  larger  scenes  fitted  with  a  curi- 
ous aptness  the  half  unreality  of  the  girl's 
emotions.  For  the  most  part  she  was  subdued, 
repressed,  realistic.  Where  she  chiefly  failed 
was  in  suggesting  from  the  first  that  the  girl 
had  not  been  roused  to  real  moral  feeling.  Her 
first  two  acts  suggested  a  force  of  character 
that  made  the  last  two  a  trifle  contradictory. 
The  other  parts  were  played  with  flawless  skill, 
in  a  key  of  stern,  quiet  realism  in  keeping  with 
the  drama.  Joseph  Kilgour  in  the  difficult  part 
of  the  broker  made  it  a  living  character  full 
of  lights  and  shades  of  goodness  and  licen- 
tiousness. And  William  Sampson  as  an  old- 
time  theatrical  "  advance  agent  "  was  a  treat. 
The  part  is  as  "  fat "  as  that  he  played  in 
"  The  Witching  Hour,"  and  as  funny.  Yet 
he  made  it  wistfully  tender,  too.  That  there 
is  so  much  humor  in  the  play  but  accentuates 
for  the  thoughtful  the  underlying  tragedy. 
For  those  who  are  not  thoughtful  it  will  un- 
doubtedly contribute  to  the  great  popular  suc- 
cess that  awaits  "  The  Easiest  Way." 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  99 

MISS  NETHERSOLE  AS  MUCKRAKER 

Savoy,  April  26,  1909 

Miss  Olga  Nethersole  has  emerged  at  the 
Savoy  Theatre  in  New  York  in  what  the 
programme  somewhat  optimistically  denomi- 
nated "  A  great  American  drama,"  called 
''The  Writing  on  the  Wall,"  the  work  of 
William  J.  Hurlbut,  the  author  of  "The 
Fighting  Hope,"  Blanche  Bates's  play  for  the 
current  season.  Notice  that  the  programme 
said,  "  A  great  American  drama."  Even  a 
programme  does  not  quite  dare  to  predict  in 
advance  "  the "  great  American  drama,  for 
which  we  have  waited  so  long,  and  on  the 
whole  so  cheerfully. 

"  The  Writing  on  the  Wall  "  —  not  to  beat 
around  the  bush,  and  not  to  mince  matters 
under  a  mistaken  idea  of  kindness  —  could  be 
judged  more  justly  as  a  play  if  it  could  be 
viewed  with  some  other  actress  in  the  stellar 
part.  Ten  years  ago,  when  some  of  us  were 
in  college  and  Miss  Nethersole  was  acting 
Paula  Tanqueray,  this  English  woman  surely 
exerted  a  kind  of  charm,  surely  exhibited 
flashes  of  power  and  roused  in  the  beholder 
emotions  of  pity  and  passion.  But  the  time 
has  now  passed  when  Miss  Nethersole  seems 
capable  of  exhibiting  anything  but  the  monot- 


100  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

onous  parade  of  affectations,  posturings  and 
falsities.  She  is  "  emotional  "  when  the  action 
calls  for  no  emotion;  she  is  dully  "  restrained  " 
when  the  situation  calls  for  passion.  She  has 
not  a  single  natural,  unconscious  moment  from 
the  rise  of  the  curtain  to  the  going  down 
thereof.  To  judge  a  play  definitely  when  she 
is  the  leading  player  is  quite  unfair  to  the 
author. 

Yet,  even  under  the  existing  conditions, 
some  facts  about  Mr.  Hurlbut's  second 
piece  to  reach  the  stage  emerge  pretty  clearly. 
And  the  first  of  these  is  that  he  still  lacks 
what  so  many  of  our  young  —  and  old  —  na- 
tive playwrights  lack,  the  power  to  strike  a 
given  note,  to  create  a  given  interest  or  mood, 
and  then  to  sustain  that  note  or  mood  to  the 
end,  not  turning  aside  to  follow  other  threads, 
not  shifting  the  interest  here,  there,  and  every- 
where. Some  people  have  scoffed  at  the  idea 
of  teaching  playwriting  at  Harvard  or  any 
other  college.  But  this  much,  at  least,  an 
academic  training  in  technique,  a  so-called 
''pedantic"  course  of ■  instruction,  can  do;  it 
can  teach  a  man  to  stick  to  his  idea;  it  can 
give  him  a  sense  of  form,  a  logical  consistency 
of  mood  and  interest.  A  playwright  can  be 
taught  to  follow  his  idea,  as  the  football  player 
is  taught  to  follow  the  ball.  And  unless  the 
playwright   does   follow   his   idea,   no  matter 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  101 

how  much  in  earnest  he  may  be  he  will  fail 
utterly  to  persuade  his  audience  of  his  sincerity. 

That  was  Mr.  Hurlbut's  fate  last  evening. 
His  play  is  an  attempt  to  dramatize  the  Trinity 
tenements,  as  it  were,  even  if  indirectly.  He 
has  felt  the  present  passion  for  contemporary 
sociological  subjects  in  the  drama,  which  is 
entirely  to  his  credit.  And  he  has,  no  doubt, 
felt  also  a  certain  ethical  indignation  against 
existing  conditions.  But  in  writing  a  play 
about  them  he  has  been  unable  to  free  himself 
from  conventional  sub-plots,  from  conventional 
"  love  interest,"  from  conventional  "  emo- 
tional scenes  "  for  the  heroine.  These  intru- 
sive episodes  detract  from  the  main  interest 
—  or  what  should  be  the  main  interest  —  of 
the  drama,  and  are  themselves,  in  turn,  merely 
weakened  and  made  the  more  trite  by  its  mo- 
ments of  real  seriousness.  The  result  is  that 
you  are  finally  convinced  that  Mr.  Hurlbut, 
after  all,  has  but  an  academic  interest  in  tene- 
ment-house reform,  and  a  knowledge  of  it 
gained  chiefly  from  the  magazine  articles  of 
Charles  Edward  Russell.  The  play  is  neither 
theatrically  nor  ethically  effective.  It  falls  be- 
tween two  stools. 

It  seems  more  worth  while  to  point  this  out 
at  length  than  to  rehearse  the  story  of  the 
play,  since  that  story  is  not  designed  to  be- 
come important.     Miss  Nethersole  plays  the 


102  AT    THE    NEW    THExVTRE 

part  of  Barbara  Lawrence,  wife  of  a  rich  man 
who  gains  his  income  from  tenement  rents. 
A  young  reformer  interests  the  wife  in  skim 
work  and  she  gradually  learns  not  only  how 
bad  the  Trinity  tenements  are,  —  which  causes 
her  to  leave  Trinity,  contrary  to  all  known 
precedent,  —  but  how  bad  are  the  tenements 
owned  by  her  husband.  One  in  particular,  on 
West  Houston  Street,  has  fire  escapes  that  will 
not  bear  the  legal  weight.  These  she  induces 
her  husband  to  promise  to  replace.  But  he 
merely  orders  them  repainted  and  a  bribe 
given  to  the  inspector.  However,  their  little 
boy  goes  to  a  Christmas  party  in  this  tene- 
ment, a  fire  breaks  out,  and  he  is  killed  in  the 
general  disaster.  This  sudden  home-coming 
of  his  misdeed  is  supposed  to  make  a  new  man 
of  the  husband  as  the  curtain  descends. 

The  play  is  quite  needlessly  complicated  and 
confused  with  a  secret  love  affair  of  the  hus- 
band, a  love  afifair  between  the  wife  and  the 
reformer,  and  a  trite  episode  concerning  a 
confusion  of  Christmas  gifts  which  reveals  to 
the  wife  her  husband's  amatory  double  life. 
If  the  public  demands  that  a  love  affair  be 
mixed  in  with  a  sociological  exposition  of  the 
tenement-house  problem,  the  public  also  de- 
mands that  this  love  interest  be  woven  into 
the  story  neatly  and  firmly,  not  clogging  the 
movement  nor  delaying  the  more  legitimate 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  103 

working-out  of  the  real  problem  of  the  play  — 
what  will  be  the  effect  on  this  man  when  his 
business  deeds  come  home  to  him,  what  will 
be  the  effect  on  this  woman  when  she  finds 
what  her  husband  has  done?  Speaking  in  the 
first  act  of  the  Trinity  corporation,  the  re- 
former said,  "  Their  clergy  sprinkle  rose  water, 
but  their  deeds  smell  to  heaven,"  and  the  audi- 
ence applauded  gleefully.  It  was  plain  where 
its  sympathies  lay.  It  was  plain  that  a  sin- 
cere, straightaway,  hard-handed  pounding  of 
immoral  tenement  owners  would  have  pleased 
this  audience  hugely.  But  they  were  treated 
to  such  pounding  only  by  fits  and  starts,  chiefly 
only  in  facts,  if  not  phrases,  taken  from  maga- 
zine ''  muckraking  "  articles.  The  pounding 
was  n't  first-handed  nor  whole-hearted.  Miss 
Nethersole  must  have  her  chances  to  "  emote." 
The  conventional  posturings  of  the  playhouse 
must  have  their  place.  Mr.  Hurlbut  has  a 
long  way  to  go  before  he  can  write  a  socio- 
logical play  of  real  value  and  interest. 


JOHN    DREW    GOES    TO    BED 

Empire,  September  21,  1909 

John  Drew  makes  an  annual  appearance  in 
a  new  part  and  in  a  new  play.     Most  recently 


104  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

the  play  was  '"  Inconstant  Georg-e,"  an  adap- 
tation made  with  a  blue  pencil  by  Gladys 
Unger,  of  "  L'Ane  de  Buridan,"  the  light 
comedy  by  de  Flers  and  Caillavet  that  first  came 
to  the  stage  of  the  Gymnase  in  Paris.  Mr. 
Drew  played  George.  Doubtless  the  change  in 
title  was  needful.  Buridan's  Ass  is  perhaps  a 
quadruped  better  known  to  the  French  than  to 
us  —  at  least  by  that  name.  Jean  Buridan  him- 
self, so  far  as  his  writings  disclose,  did  not 
invent  this  ass.  He  appears  to  have  been  the 
invention  of  Jean's  controversial  enemies,  who 
thrust  him  on  the  philosopher  for  purposes  of 
ridicule.  Jean  Buridan  flourished  in  the  four- 
teenth century,  and  taught  that  the  will  is  not 
a  separate  attribute  of  consciousness,  like  sen- 
sation or  emotion,  but  simply  the  result  of 
mental  reenforcement  or  increased  attention. 
Thus  he  anticipated  modern  psychology;  and 
thus  he  offended  the  theologians  of  his  day, 
who  invented  the  tale  of  the  ass  between  a 
bale  of  hay  and  a  pail  of  water,  equally  thirsty 
and  hungry,  so  that  neither  impulse  was  more 
reen forced  than  the  other  and  the  unfortunate 
animal  perished.  Inconstant  George  is  the 
human  counterpart  of  this  quadruped,  and  the 
hay  and  water  were  impersonated  at  the  Empire 
by  Miss  Adelaide  Prince  and  Miss  Jane  Laurel. 
But  George  does  not  perish.  He  gets  married ; 
a  young  girl  comes  along  the  road  and  leads 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  105 

him  out  of  his  perplexity.  She  makes  up  his 
mind  for  him,  as  it  were.  Mr.  Shaw  would 
say  there  is  nothing  strange  about  that. 

De  Flers  and  Caillavet  have  the  trick  of 
being  constantly  and  consistently  amusing,  — 
so  amusing  that  even  the  blue  pencil  and  the 
cleansing  carbolic  cannot  make  them  dull.  It 
is  a  trick  with  them,  no  doubt.  They  write  in 
that  strain  of  solemn  nonsense  of  which  Gil- 
bert's "  Engaged  "  is  the  great  example,  and 
make  up  for  something  less  than  his  whimsy 
by  something  more  than  his  spice.  "  L'Ane 
de  Buridan  "  is  very,  very  spicy  indeed.  The 
Parisian  partners  work  the  familiar  wires  of 
farce  and  make  it  seem  strange,  fantastic,  al- 
most real  at  moments  —  almost  real,  because 
in  all  their  pieces  is  one  character,  usually  a 
young  girl,  conceived  with  as  much  tenderness 
as  humor,  who  shares  largely  in  the  fortunes 
of  the  play.  In  "  Love  Watches,"  to  be  sure, 
it  was  a  man,  —  the  poor,  unloved  bookworm. 
In  "  Inconstant  George  "  it  is  little  Micheline, 
a  wild,  tom-boyish,  naive  girl  who  loves  George, 
and  gets  him,  too,  in  the  end.  Could  these 
authors  conceive  a  character,  a  whole  play, 
that  should  be  all  tenderness,  that  should  be  all 
real?  Perhaps  not,  though  they  came  near  to 
it  in  their  early  "Miquette."  At  least  they  can 
go  far  enough  to  give  their  fantastic  farces 
a  touch  of  distinction,  an  odd  little  flavor  al- 


106  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

most  of  tears,  faintly  discerned  but  unforget- 
table and  unique. 

The  plot  of  "  Inconstant  George  "  bears  the 
French  mark.  George  is  a  man  who  loves 
women,  the  more  the  better.  He  can  never 
love  one,  because  he  can  never  make  up  his 
mind  which  one.  He  is  gay,  Gilbertian,  irre- 
sponsible, delightful.  Lucien  de  Versannes  is 
his  friend.  Lucien  has  a  wife,  a  mistress,  and 
an  orphan  ward,  Micheline  —  a  wild,  sensi- 
tive, primitive  child  —  who  loves  George. 
Lucien  wishes  to  get  George  for  her,  and 
when  he  discovers  that  George  has  been  mak- 
ing love  both  to  his  wife  and  his  mistress,  he 
goes  to  that  gay  young  man,  whom  he  finds 
in  bed,  —  John  Drew  wears  blue  silk  pajamas, 
—  and  tells  him  that  he  must  choose.  He  must 
decide  to  take  one  or  the  other  woman  and 
marry  her.  Obviously,  such  a  scene,  to  be 
tolerable,  must  be  treated  with  an  underlying 
sense  of  its  preposterousness.  It  must  be  sol- 
emnly nonsensical.  De  Flers  and  Caillavet 
have  so  treated  it  in  the  original  play,  and 
even  in  the  English  adaptation,  which  for 
some  reason  too  deep  for  the  ordinary  mind 
to  fathom  has  converted  Lucien's  mistress 
into  his  "  cousin,"  it  is  deliciously  funny, 
gravely  preposterous,  harmlessly  piquant. 
Why  "  cousin  "?  Lucien  offers  to  surrender  his 
wife,  to  which  managerial  wisdom  could  see 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  107 

no  possible  objection.  But,  in  our  good  Amer- 
ican code  of  morality,  he  must  not  surrender 
his  mistress ! !  And  does  "  cousin  "  deceive 
anybody?  It  is  a  Saxon  fig-leaf  on  a  Gallic 
plot. 

Inevitably,  George  is  unable  to  decide,  and 
Micheline  gets  him,  but  not  before  she  has 
tried  to  win  him  by  pretending  that  she  is  a 
bad  girl,  because  she  has  heard  him  say  that 
he  can  never  love  a  woman  he  respects. 
Micheline's  efforts  to  pretend  that  she  is  bad 
are  half  comic,  half  pathetic.  In  the  French 
version  she  showed  George  a  photograph  of 
her  *'  lover,"  which,  of  course,  she  had  bought 
in  a  shop.  It  was  a  portrait  of  Paul  Bourget, 
and  Paris  was  vastly  amused  at  the  sally.  In 
the  adaptation  one  waited  eagerly  to  see  what 
name  would  be  selected.  And  the  adapter  had 
a  stroke  of  genius.  "Who  is  that  man?" 
roared  Mr.  Drew  when  George  had  guessed 
her  deception.  "  It  is  Wilbur  Wright,"  said 
Micheline,  and  the  house  laughed  for  minutes. 

The  too  industrious  blue  pencil  has  erased 
lines  as  well  as  episodes  —  lines  of  a  delightful 
and  wicked  wit ;  but  on  the  whole,  barring  the 
needless  and  silly  "  cousin,"  the  adaptation  is 
as  close  to  the  original  as  could  be  expected, 
and,  with  Mr.  Drew  as  George,  it  makes  in- 
telligent and  mirthful  entertainment.  Mr. 
Drew's  easy  command  of  the  resources  of  a 


108  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

light  comedian  made  his  impersonation  of  the 
irresponsible,  fantastic,  weak-willed,  happy-go- 
lucky  youth  flow  smoothly;  his  own  personal- 
ity gave  the  touch  of  underlying  gentleness 
and  worth  to  George,  w^iich  the  play  and  the 
part  of  Micheline  demand;  while  his  powers 
of  comic  suggestion  made  the  perplexities  of 
the  plot  doubly  delicious.  In  a  company  gen- 
erally pitifully  incompetent  to  waft  these  Gallic 
fantasies  of  wit,  these  ever-changing  sparkles, 
across  the  footlights,  Mr.  Drew  understood  his 
tools,  knew  his  trade,  grasped  his  character, 
and  caught  the  true  and  only  possible  vein  of 
the  piece.  Lines  that  in  the  reading  of  the 
play  bring  laughter  fell  dead  on  the  audience 
when  the  supporting  players  recited  them  as 
so  many  speeches  learned  by  rote.  Then  Mr. 
Drew  would  enter,  touch  easily  a  sentence  or 
two,  and  once  more  the  Gallic  sparkle  was 
there.  Miss  Mary  Boland  played  Micheline 
in  a  manner  that  brought  her  much  applause 
and  the  ready  laugh.  But  she  never  for  an 
instant  reached  the  real  Micheline,  never  for 
an  instant  by  her  own  efforts  or  her  own 
powers  of  suggestion  found  that  little  salt 
flavor  of  tears  which  gives  the  play  its  unique 
and  penetrating  charm.  Mr.  Drew,  as  he 
has  so  often  done  before  in  adaptations  from 
the  French,  carried  the  performance  on  his 
own  shoulders,  and  by  his  own  efforts  let  us 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  109 

see    what    a    delightful    play    is    "  L'Ane    de 
Buridan." 


MR.    THOMAS'S    NEW    BIRTH 

Garrick,  October  i8,  1909 

There  came  a  time  in  Tolstoi's  life  when, 
in  a  remarkable  book  which  everybody  read 
with  interest  and  with  which  nobody  agreed, 
the  author  repudiated  all  his  former  work, 
declaring  either  that  it  was  bad  art  or  not 
art  at  all.  At  some  such  position  Augustus 
Thomas  seems  to  have  arrived.  When  "  The 
Witching  Hour  "  was  first  acted  in  1907  it 
was  apparent  at  once  that  Mr.  Thomas  was  a 
changed  man.  This  play  of  hypnotism  and 
telepathy,  of  the  sub-conscious  forces  of  the 
mind,  was  as  different  from  the  farces  and  melo- 
dramas which  had  preceded  it  from  Mr. 
Thomas's  pen  as  the  Kipling  of  "  Actions  and 
Reactions  "  differs  from  the  Kipling  of  "  Sol- 
diers Three."  Mr.  Thomas's  sudden  preoccu- 
pation with  subtle  things,  with  immaterial 
forces,  seemed  to  breed  in  him  a  new  gift  of 
imagination  and  a  new  capacity  for  style  — 
for  that  conciseness  and  distinction  of  dia- 
logue, that  clearness  of  thought,  that  dignity 
of  characterization,  which  our  native  drama  so 
frequently  lacks. 


110  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

"  The  Harvest  INIoon,"  his  first  new  play 
since  "  The  Witching  Hour,"  also  discloses  no 
trace  of  the  old  Thomas,  save  as  it  tells  a  story 
clearly  and  well.  It  is  entirely  the  new  Thomas 
working  here,  the  Thomas  occupied  with  the 
immaterial  forces  of  the  mind,  with  the  power 
of  suggestion,  with  the  dynamic  importance  of 
thought.  Like  "  The  Witching  Hour,"  it  is 
a  play  quite  evidently  freighted  with  its  au- 
thor's message  to  his  hearers,  and  in  it  Mr. 
Thomas,  though  he  speaks  through  the  mouth 
of  his  leading  personage,  a  French  playwright 
and  novelist,  may  be  heard  remarking:  "  I 
would  willingly  give  the  rest  of  my  life  to  go 
back  and  take  from  my  plays  every  word  that 
has  made  men  less  happy,  less  hopeful,  less 
kind." 

Does  Mr.  Thomas  mean  us  to  consider  these 
words  as  his  personal  confession?  There  can 
be  little  doubt  of  it.  "  The  Witching  Hour  " 
roused  a  suspicion ;  "  The  Harvest  Moon " 
confirms  it.  Its  imaginative  force  and  its  pro- 
found sincerity  preclude  any  possibility  that  it 
was  written  because  the  earlier  play  succeeded. 
It  was  written  because  Augustus  Thomas  has 
become  a  missionary.  He  seems,  indeed,  to 
have  dedicated  his  ripened  powers  as  a  dram- 
atist —  and  he  is  at  present  the  most  con- 
siderable figure  among  American  playwrights 
—  to   preaching   the    gospel    of   the    dynamic 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  111 

power  of  thought.  So  long  as  this  preaching 
continues  to  ripen  his  imagination  and  refine 
his  style,  and  so  long  as  he  keeps  such  a  fast 
hold  on  his  human  story  as  he  has  done  in 
"The  Witching  Hour"  and  "The  Harvest 
Moon,"  not  even  the  weariest  business  man 
or  the  most  rabid  opponent  of  polemics  on  the 
stage  need  worry  in  the  least.  The  new 
Thomas  is  still  a  dramatist  and  a  better  one 
than  before.  He  has  enlarged  his  own  scope 
and  added  a  new  and  rare  pleasure  to  our 
theatre.  With  the  audacity  of  strong  convic- 
tions and  the  skill  of  long  practice,  he  has 
created  an  American  drama  of  ideas,  and  into 
the  artificial  atmosphere  of  the  theatre  brought 
the  tonic  of  a  real  psychology  and  the  magic 
of  mysterious  things. 

The  plot  of  "  Harvest  Moon "  is  of  the 
simplest  contriving.  The  scene  opens  in  the 
house  at  Lenox  of  Professor  FuUerton  of 
Harvard.  Mr.  Thomas  hastens  to  explain 
that  the  professor  has  other  resources  than 
his  salary.  Fullerton  has  a  daughter,  Dora, 
and  a  sister,  Cornelia.  Dora  is  a  girl  of 
eighteen.  She  wishes  to  go  on  the  stage.  Her 
mother,  it  seems,  left  Fullerton  before  she  was 
born  for  the  theatre,  divorced  him,  and  soon 
after  died  in  Paris.  This  fact  Dora's  Aunt 
Cornelia  has  never  forgotten,  nor  let  Dora 
forget.     Dora  looks  like  her  mother,  and  that 


112  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

fact  has  been  held  before  her  as  a  "  warning  " 
all  the  poor  child's  life.  Such  females  exist, 
unfortunately,  and  they  are  not  always  aunts; 
sometimes  they  are  parents.  Naturally  the 
family  oppose  Dora's  choice  of  profession,  and 
also  her  affection  for  a  young  playwright  in 
whose  piece  she  is  to  appear.  Perhaps  Mr. 
Thomas  underestimates  the  honor  in  which 
young  playwrights  are  held  in  Cambridge,  but 
he  is  probably  quite  right  about  the  acting, 
**  In  winter,"  says  the  family,  impressively, 
"  we  are  in  Cambridge,  which  is  practically 
Boston."  Mr,  Thomas  has  not  reformed  his 
irony. 

It  so  befalls  that  Dora's  choice  depends  on 
the  advice  of  a  certain  Monsieur  Vavin,  —  a 
French  author  with  the  red  ribbon,  gray- 
haired  and  distinguished,  who  is  somewhat 
mysteriously  upon  the  scene  and  evidently 
well  acquainted  with  the  family.  In  a  confer- 
ence between  him,  the  professor,  and  the  pro- 
fessor's friend,  a  shrewd  and  humorous  judge, 
Fullerton  confesses  that  Dora  is  not  his  daugh- 
ter. She  was  born  to  his  wife  in  France  after 
the  divorce  and  adopted  by  him  because  no 
father  appeared  to  take  charge  of  her.  Vavin 
does  not  seem  sur])rised,  nor  does  he  counsel 
the  girl  to  remain  at  home.  Instead,  he  leads 
her  forth  to  the  theatre  as  the  first  curtain 
falls. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  113 

The  second  act  passes  in  New  York,  between 
the  dress  rehearsal  and  the  first  performance 
of  the  new  play.  Dora  has  refused  to  act  that 
night  because  Winthrop,  her  lover  and  the 
author  of  the  play,  at  the  rehearsal  forgot  the 
lover  in  the  artist,  and  told  her  that  her  love 
scene  with  the  leading  man  was  "  vulgar." 
But  that  is  not  the  whole  truth.  Vavin  gets 
the  whole  truth  from  her  by  degrees.  ■  She  is 
sure  that  Winthrop  is  right,  but  yet  their  way 
of  playing  the  scene  did  not  seem  vulgar  to 
her.  She  admits  a  momentary  interest  in  the 
leading  man.  Therefore  she  is,  after  all,  a 
vagrant  and  unworthy  woman,  as  they  say 
her  mother  was.  She  is  unworthy  of  her  lover. 
Vavin  calls  the  others  into  the  room.  He  tells 
the  judge  he  looks  sick.  In  two  minutes  he 
has  the  judge  worried  and  in  three  minutes 
he  has  the  rest  deciding  that  the  judge  does 
look  ill.  Then  Vavin  turns  on  them.  If  he 
has  made  a  well  man  think  he  is  sick  in  a  few 
minutes,  he  declares,  what  do  they  suppose 
their  eighteen  years  of  suggestion  might  do 
to  the  mind  of  a  sensitive  girl?  This  scene 
is  admirably  and  persuasively  handled,  and 
the  vividness  and  justness  of  its  psychological 
import  reach  the  most  obtuse  beholder.  Again 
Vavin  leads  Dora  bravely  back  to  the  theatre. 

The  third  act,  which  comprises  the  one-act 
sketch  from  which  the  whole  play  arose,  is 


114  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

laid  in  Vavin's  apartments,  and  here  Mr. 
Thomas  may  seem  to  many  fantastic.  Vavin 
discourses  to  Winthrop  on  the  suggestive  effect 
of  different  colors,  and  illustrates  with  lights 
and  draperies  how  a  domestic  scene  should  be 
played  in  red;  or  a  scene  slightly  piquant  in 
yellow;  or  a  true-love  scene  in  moonlight. 
Here  enters  the  significance  of  the  title.  The 
harvest  moon,  says  Vavin,  rises  three  nights 
at  the  same  hour,  that  the  "  droll  God  "  may 
help  his  children  to  mate  in  the  glad  season 
of  the  vintage.  And  the  Frenchman  sets 
Winthrop  and  Dora  to  rehearsing  the  true-love 
scene  from  the  play  in  the  moonlight  which 
streams  through  the  window.  Then  he  slips 
from  the  room.  The  rehearsal  changes  into 
reality.  The  lovers  are  reconciled.  He  comes 
back  to  find  them  so,  smiles,  and  sends  them 
home.  Standing  in  the  window,  silhouetted 
in  the  light  that  streams  in  upon  a  darkened 
stage,  he  holds  a  glass  of  wine  up  till  it 
flashes  like  a  prism,  and  says  to  his  servant, 
as  the  curtain  falls,  "  It  is  a  droll  God,  Henri, 
with  His  vintage  and  His  children  and  His  har- 
vest moon." 

The  last  act  traverses  the  agonized  discovery 
by  Dora  that  Fullerton  is  not  her  father,  and 
the  further  discovery  that  Vavin  is.  As  the 
professor  had  perhaps  driven  his  wife  away, 
much  as  he  loved  her,  by  his  own  and  his  sis- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  115 

ter's  suggestions  that  her  temperament  was  a 
wicked  one,  so  Vavin,  who  had  married  her 
in  England,  had  driven  her  from  him  by  a 
suggestion,  thoughtlessly  made  in  a  quarrel, 
that  their  marriage  was  not  legal  in  France. 
His  penitence  and  the  rush  of  Dora  to  his 
arms  make  a  tender  and  touching  climax  to 
the  play,  the  more  as  Dora  is  drawn  with 
more  minuteness,  care  and  truth  to  the  intri- 
cate mysteries  of  the  feminine  heart  than  Mr. 
Thomas  has  before  displayed. 

All  this  is  obviously  a  quiet  story,  without 
great  theatrical  excitement.  Its  constructive 
weakness  is  the  rather  irrelevant  third  act, 
which  does  not  further  the  narrative  suffi- 
ciently, and  is  of  dubious  scientific  import. 
The  play  lacks  alike  the  cumulative  suspense 
and  the  obvious  excitement  of  "  The  Witching 
Hour,"  and  is  destined  to  much  less  popular- 
ity. The  story,  however,  is  in  its  main  outlines 
admirably  told  and  psychologically  sound  and 
valuable.  The  style  is  nervous,  terse,  at  times 
poetic;  the  play  is  infused  with  sincerity,  ripe 
reflection,  an  earnest  purpose.  It  richly  de- 
serves and  amply  repays  attention.  It  is  a 
just  and  striking  dramatic  illustration  of  the 
power  of  suggestion,  alike  for  evil  and  for 
good. 

The  acting  of  this  play  was  made  not- 
able by  the  performance  of  George  Nash  as 


116  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Vavin,  the  French  author,  the  mouthpiece  of 
Mr.  Thomas's  wisdom.  Mr.  Nash  was  some 
years  ago  a  capable  Mercutio.  In  "  The 
Witching  Hour  "  he  was  the  hardhanded  dis- 
trict attorney,  the  "  heavy  villain."  In  "  The 
Harvest  Moon "  he  is  loidden  to  portray  a 
father's  solicitude,  a  noted  man's  dignity  and 
intellectual  weight,  and  on  occasion  something 
of  a  prophet's  authority,  a  touch  of  poetry,  a 
Gallic  grace  and  urbanity,  and  spiritual  sweet- 
ness. It  was  a  large  task  and  Mr.  Nash  met 
it  largely.  He  brought  to  it  unexpected  re- 
sources of  technique,  and  he  projected  a  per- 
sonality for  his  part  as  tonic,  as  gracious  and 
as  suggestive  as  the  message  of  the  play.  It 
was  a  performance  that  would  have  done  credit 
to  any  actor  on  our  stage. 


"  ISRAEL  "  AND  THE  HAPPY  ENDING 

Criterion,  October  25,  1909 

Henry  Bernstein's  "  Israel,"  originally  acted 
in  Paris  with  Mmme.  Rejane,  Mr.  Gauth- 
ier,  and  Mr.  Signoret  in  the  leading 
parts,  was  shown  at  the  Criterion  Thea- 
tre here,  in  a  silly,  feeble,  and  illogical 
adaptation  with  a  cast  grievously  misfitted  to 
the   characters   it   undertook.      "  The   Thief," 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  117 

Bernstein's  first  important  play  to  be  repre- 
sented in  America,  had  the  benefit  of  Sydney 
Herbert  and  Kyrle  Bellew  in  the  cast.  His 
second  play  to  be  performed  here,  "  Samson," 
was  feebly  adapted  by  William  Gillette,  and 
still  more  feebly  acted  by  him  and  by  his  com- 
pany. In  the  present  version  of  "  Israel "  the 
limit  of  manipulation  and  adulteration  seems 
to  be  reached.  Bernstein's  play  is  a  tragedy  of 
modern  life.  For  the  poor,  ignorant,  weak- 
minded  American  public,  as  managerial  ob- 
servation seems  to  believe  it,  managerial  wis- 
dom decreed  a  "  happy  ending  "  to  "  Israel." 
Hamlet  lives  and  marries  Opheha ;  Othello  for- 
gives Desdemona  and  takes  her  to  his  "  sooty 
bosom  " ;  Romeo  and  Juliet  wake  up  and  live 
happy  ever  after.  And  this  "  happy  ending  " 
to  "  Israel  "  not  only  destroys  the  climax  of  the 
play,  but  to  bring  it  about  the  keen  dramatic 
contrasts,  the  intellectual  body  and  balanced 
construction  of  Bernstein's  final  act  are  thrown 
to  the  winds,  and  something  emerges  as  far 
from  his  original  drama  as  Laura  Jean  Libby 
is  from  Thomas  Hardy. 

Yet  Bernstein  himself  made  this  Ameri- 
can version,  at  Charles  Frohman's  request. 
He  no  doubt  made  it  because  he  cared  more  for 
American  dollars  than  for  the  artistic  integ- 
rity of  his  work.  His  act  is  beneath  contempt. 
Most  of  his  plays  have  shown  an  underlying 


118  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

strain  of  ineradicable  vulgarity.  But  in  his 
tragedy  of  his  own  race  one  might  have  ex- 
pected him  at  least  to  be  sincere.  Sincerity, 
however,  is  not  in  him,  any  more  than  fine 
breeding.  He  is  becoming  rapidly  an  offense. 
To  add  to  the  slaughter  of  the  American 
production,  Miss  Constance  Collier,  whose 
Jewish  blood  speaks  in  her  physical  aspect,  is 
cast  for  Mme.  Rejane's  part,  the  Christian 
mother,  and  through  the  long  second  act  she 
hurtles  all  over  the  stage,  gurgles  and  con- 
torts herself,  and  does,  no  doubt,  her  poor  best 
in  the  fashion  of  the  old  "  emotional  acting  " 
to  give  the  impression  that  she  is  creating  a 
character  and  making  clear  an  emotional  story. 
The  part  of  the  elderly  Jew  falls  to  Edwin 
Arden,  an  actor  of  experience,  but  of  hard, 
metallic  style,  devoid  of  sentiment  or  pathos; 
and  the  whole  character  calls  for  both,  and 
even  tragedy.  The  son,  the  anti-Semitic  agi- 
tator and  fiery  young  leader,  is  played  by  an 
English  actor,  Graham  Browne,  who  has  the 
semblance  not  of  a  leader  but  of  a  musical 
comedy  dandy,  who  speaks  not  as  the  orator 
but  as  one  afflicted  with  a  mouth  full  of  hot 
potato,  and  whose  capacity  for  tragic  emotion 
and  tortured  grief  is  that  of  an  amateur  in 
distress. 

The  play  begins  in  a  Paris  club,  and  for  a 
whole    act    no    women    appear    on    the    stage. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  119 

Thibault,  prince  of  Clar,  a  member  of  the  club, 
is  the  fiery  leader  of  the  anti-Semitic  party,  and 
it  is  his  desire  to  pick  a  quarrel  with  Justin 
Gutlieb,  a  Jewish  banker  twice  his  age,  and 
force  him  to  resign  from  the  club.  Most  of  the 
members  are  on  Thibault's  side,  though  one  or 
two  of  them  defend  the  Jews.  The  act  ends 
when  Thibault  knocks  Gutlieb's  hat  from  his 
head.  The  second  act  takes  place  in  the  apart- 
ments of  Thibault's  mother,  the  only  woman  in 
the  original  play.  She  sends  for  Gutlieb,  to 
prevent  the  duel.  It  develops  that  Gutlieb  is 
Thibault's  father,  that  the  young  man  who 
feels  such  repugnance  at  the  mere  sight  of  a 
Hebrew  is  half  Jew  himself.  There  is  a  fine 
scene  between  the  mother  and  Gutlieb,  one 
rarely  illuminative  both  of  the  paternal  in- 
stincts of  the  Jewish  race  and  of  the  selfish  in- 
stincts, too.  Bernstein  knows  his  own  people. 
Gutlieb  refuses  to  forgo  the  inevitable  duel 
even  with  his  own  son.  "  It  is  to  my  interest 
to  be  brave,"  he  says.  "  I  will  not  go  out  of  the 
club  by  the  back  door."  Yet  his  tenderness 
for  his  boy  somehow  emerges,  and  there  is 
sense  of  the  passion  that  once  flamed  for  the 
mother,  the  passion  which  hates  the  Church 
which  robbed  him  of  her.  Thibault  discovers 
him  with  his  mother,  and  there  follows  one  of 
Bernstein's  long,  mounting,  wrenching  scenes 
between  mother  and  son.    They  are  alone  on  the 


120  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

stage.  The  mother  fights  for  a  promise  that 
Thibault  will  only  wound  his  opponent,  and 
wins  the  pledge.  But  the  son's  suspicions  have 
been  aroused.  He  drives  his  mother  slowly 
back  in  a  tortured  inquisition  till  finally,  in  a 
tremendous  climax  of  theatrical  but  poignant 
emotion,  she  tells  him  who  he  is.  The  door 
shuts  on  the  son's  cry  of  dazed  anguish. 

So  far,  save  for  the  introduction  early  in  the 
second  act  of  a  young  woman  bearing  the  por- 
tentous name  of  Henriette  Giscourt  de  Jouvins, 
the  American  adaptation  follows  the  original 
French  play  fairly  closely.  But  with  the  last 
act  the  split  is  as  wide  as  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 
As  it  came  first  from  Bernstein's  hand,  it  is  his 
finest  achievement  thus  far  in  all  his  plays. 
There  has,  of  course,  been  no  duel.  Thibault 
has  a  scene  with  his  Confessor,  who  persuades 
him  out  of  suicide  and  into  the  resolution  to 
enter  a  monastery.  No  sooner  has  this  Chris- 
tian influence  been  pictured  working  upon  him, 
than  there  follows  a  scene  between  him  and 
Gutlieb,  his  blood  father,  which  balances  the 
other  scene  as  the  Jewish  blood  balances  the 
French  in  Thibault's  veins.  It  is  a  remarkable 
interview,  the  father  sadly  affirming  his  love 
for  the  son,  the  son  stoutly  affirming  his  hatred 
for  the  father.  But  Gutlieb  shows  him  that 
his  very  passion  against  the  Jews  springs  from 
his  Jewish  blood,  that  his  power  of  oratory,  his 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  121 

ambition  for  leadership,  his  mind  and  spirit, 
are  Jewish  inheritances,  and  totally  unfit  him 
for  the  monastic  life.  Womided  in  his  dearest 
pride,  torn  with  the  sudden  tragedy  of  dis- 
covering that  he  himself  belongs  to  the  race 
he  so  much  despises  and  loathes,  and  belongs 
to  it  so  irrevocably  that  he  cannot  even  find 
refuge  in  the  Church,  poor  Thibault  turns 
away.  The  sound  of  a  shot  comes  from  an 
inner  room.  The  mother,  who,  years  before, 
when  Thibault  was  born,  had  abandoned  Gut- 
lieb's  love  at  the  bidding  of  the  Church,  ac- 
cuses him  of  her  son's  death.  "  It  is  not  I  who 
have  killed  your  son,"  he  returns.  "  It  is  your 
God  who  has  killed  him."  Her  answer  is  at 
once  a  solemn  and  pathetic  cry.  "  No,  no. 
Not  God,  God  aids  us  to  live.  In  the  name  of 
the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost." 
So  the  play  ends. 

In  the  American  mutilation,  the  opening 
scene  with  the  Confessor  is  completely  omitted, 
spoiling  the  carefully  planned  balance  of  the 
act.  The  spectator  learns  that  a  duel  has  been 
fought  —  against  all  the  instincts  of  Thibault, 
of  course  —  and  finds  Thibault  querulously 
complaining  to  Gutlieb  that  if  he  lives  he  will 
not  know  whether  his  name  is  Gutlieb  or  the 
Prince  of  Clar.  He  is  about  to  kill  himself 
(Gutlieb  having  departed)  when  Henriette 
Giscourt  de  Jouvins,  in  a  picture  hat  and  a 


122  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

yellow  suit,  comes  in  and  tells  him  that  she 
loves  him,  has  always  loved  him,  in  fact, 
since  they  were  children  together,  and  so  on  in 
the  ancient  vein  of  sentimental  gabble.  Enter 
a  monastery !  Not  much !  Kill  himself  — 
that  was  something  to  make  a  young  girl  for- 
get even  her  sex.  Henriette  forgets  all  the 
training  of  a  well-bred  young  French  woman, 
too,  throws  her  arms  around  Thibault's  neck, 
and  all  ends  happily.  Whether  Thibault's 
name  thereafter  is  Gutlieb  or  the  Prince  of 
Clar  you  do  not  know,  to  be  sure.  But  why 
bother  over  a  little  detail  like  that  in  a  "  happy 
ending  "? 

No  acting  could  make  the  farrago  of  non- 
sense into  which  the  last  act  has  been  converted 
cither  logical,  plausible  or  effective.  But  the 
first,  and  more  especially  the  second,  act  re- 
main vehicles  for  the  exercise  of  emotional  act- 
ing in  the  traditional  sense  of  the  words.  The 
second,  in  particular,  rises  in  steady  crescendo 
to  a  pitch  of  tremendous  tension  and  suspense. 
But  for  the  portrayal  of  it  both  Miss  Collier 
and  Mr.  Browne  were  ridiculously  inadequate. 
Mr.  Browne  not  only  lacked  every  attribute 
of  dignity  and  force  required  to  win  conviction 
for  his  leadership  and  sympathy  for  his  pride, 
but  in  moments  of  excitement  his  words  be- 
came lost  in  a  rushing  whirlpool  of  disjointed 
syllables  and  he  simply  spluttered.     Miss  Col- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  123 

lier  made  no  effort  whatever  to  appear  other 
than  herself  in  physical  aspect,  and  she  does 
not  yet  appear  old  enough  to  be  the  mother 
of  a  boy  of  twenty-five  or  thirty.  She  ex- 
presses tortured  mental  agonies  by  extending 
her  neck,  by  writhing  on  a  sofa,  by  gestures 
which  can  only  be  described  as  flopping.  She 
had  no  unified  conception  of  the  character,  nor 
any  unified  design  in  the  scene.  It  was  impos- 
sible to  tell  whether  she  still  treasured  a 
love  for  Gutlieb.  It  was  almost  equally  impos- 
sible to  tell  whether,  in  fighting  against  a  con- 
fession to  her  son,  she  was  trying  to  shield  him, 
or  herself,  or  Gutlieb.  At  times  she  played  the 
scene  like  a  trivial,  weak-minded,  lying  wo- 
man driven  to  bay.  At  times  she  seemed 
striving  for  some  dim  conception  of  maternal 
protection  of  her  offspring.  And  a  unified  con- 
ception of  this  scene  Bernstein  has  left  entirely 
to  the  actress.  He  evidently  had  none  himself. 
A  friendly  audience  applauded  her  to  the  echo. 
A  thoughtful  observer  could  only  sit  sadly  by 
and  wonder  that  such  things  be.  The  best  act- 
ing in  the  cast  was  done  by  Frederick  Eric,  in 
a  small  part  in  the  opening  act.  (The  character 
comes  into  subsequent  acts  in  the  original.) 
He  bore  himself  like  a  gentleman  and  a  mem- 
ber of  an  aristocratic  society;  he  spoke  clearly 
and  intelligently,  he  was  as  the  shadow  of 
a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land.     We  have  not 


124  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

yet  seen  Bernstein's  '*  Israel "  in  America. 
We  have  only  seen  a  beautiful  example  of 
Bernstein's  cupidity. 


"  HEROD  "  AT  LAST 

Lyric,  October  26,  1909 

It  is  now  more  than  a  decade  since  Stephen 
Phillips  flamed  into  popularity  with  "  Mar- 
pessa,"  and  then  with  the  stage  tragedy  of 
**  Paolo  and  Francesca,"  and  was  hailed  as  a 
torch-bearer  in  the  royal  line.  Alas!  his  torch 
burned  but  briefly  with  its  promised  brilliance. 
It  has  been  growing  fainter  and  fainter  every 
year,  till  with  "  Faust  "  it  seemed  to  go  out 
altogether.  Before  it  dimmed  he  wrote  one 
tragedy  of  sustained  power  and  high  poetic 
dignity  and  pathos,  "  Herod,"  his  best  contri- 
bution to  the  poetic  drama.  It  was  first 
acted  in  October  of  1900,  in  London,  by  Sir 
Llerbert  Tree.  But  it  was  not  until  October, 
1909,  at  the  Lyric  Theatre,  that  it  reached 
the  New  York  stage.  Mr.  Faversham,  who 
purchased  the  American  rights  to  the  play 
when  it  was  written,  waited  nine  years  before 
he  availed  himself  of  them.  And  thereby  he 
showed  his  wisdom.  The  William  Faversham 
of  1900  could  not  have  played  "  Herod,"  even 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  125 

had  his  manager  permitted  him  to  try  the  part. 
To-day  Mr.  Faversham  is  his  own  manager. 
He  has  had  the  courage  and  the  ambition  to 
break  away  from  the  routine  of  commercial 
stardom  —  the  "  safe  and  sane  "  poHcy  of  long 
seasons  in  one  part,  calculated  to  please  the 
masses  and  offend  nobody  —  and  last  season  he 
mounted  a  serious  Spanish  drama,  and  pocketed 
the  profits.  With  these  profits  he  has  now 
undertaken  ''  Herod,"  and  with  his  new  ambi- 
tion and  his  new  weight  of  independent  respon- 
sibility to  give  him  spur,  essayed  the  chief  part 
in  the  tragedy.  For  the  courage  of  the  venture, 
the  sustained  interest  of  the  performance,  its 
unfailing  dignity  and  tragic  atmosphere,  its 
beauty  of  detail  and  its  considerable  realization 
of  the  emotional  poignancy  of  the  story,  too 
much  praise  can  hardly  be  accorded  Mr.  Faver- 
sham. Unaided,  he  has  raised  himself  into  a 
new  position  of  authority  on  the  American 
stage,  and  unaided  he  has  contributed  a  signifi- 
cant and  an  unusual  pleasure  to  the  season. 
He  has  conquered  a  New  York  audience  with 
a  poetic  tragedy. 

For  Mr.  Faversham  did  conquer.  Let  the 
graybeards  talk  as  they  will  of  the  lost  art  of 
elocution  —  and  they  are  quite  right ;  let  the 
youngsters  talk  as  they  will  about  the  stilted 
effect  of  blank  verse  on  the  stage  to  the  ears 
of  a  modern  audience;   yet  Stephen  Phillips's 


126  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

**  Herod,"  though  it  was  read  less  beautifully 
than  it  would  have  been  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago,  though  it  was  acted  less  largely,  far  less 
largely  and  less  poignantly,  and  though  it  is 
written  in  blank  verse,  won  a  breathless  inter- 
est and  inspired  the  deep  and  cleansing  emo- 
tions of  true  tragedy  —  of  tragedy  that  is  lifted 
above  the  sordid  and  the  realistic  by  the  music 
of  its  speech  and  the  nobility  of  its  setting. 
There  was  appropriate  instrumental  music  by 
Coleridge  Taylor,  never  obtrusive  —  muted 
strings  now  and  again,  the  fanfare  of  trumpets 
without  the  gates,  a  stately  funeral  march. 
But  when  this  music  ceased,  it  was  striking  to 
the  modern  mind  to  feel  how  the  music  of  the 
verse  carried  on  the  mood,  how  the  flashes  of 
poetic  imagery  with  which  Mr.  Phillips  has 
adorned  his  drama  as  with  jewels  kindled  the 
imagination  and,  like  an  exquisite  phrase  in 
an  opera,  intensified  the  scene.  That  these 
things  were  so,  that  not  for  a  moment  did  the 
interest  of  the  audience  flag  or  its  sympathy 
with  the  story  cease,  is  at  once  testimony  to 
the  power  of  Mr.  Phillips's  play,  proving  it  his 
most  communicating  drama  for  the  stage,  and 
testimony  as  well  to  the  skill  of  Mr.  Faver- 
sham's  stage  management,  which  was  minute 
and  intelligent,  and  to  his  acting  and  that  of 
his  company.  Great  acting  it  may  not  have 
been  —  granted.     But  bad  acting  it  was  not. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  127 

People  are  not  stirred  by  bad  acting,  not  even 
in  New  York. 

The  text  of  "  Herod  "  is  familiar.  The  one 
setting  of  the  tragedy  is  the  great  hall  of  audi- 
ence in  Herod's  palace  overlooking  Jerusalem, 
a  setting  that  inevitably  suggests  the  operatic 
*'  Salome."  But  the  Herod  of  Phillips's  drama 
is  another  and  less  degenerate  an  upstart,  who 
has  won  his  way  to  sovereignty  by  sheer  ability 
and  relentless  and  cruel  force,  and  married 
Mariamne  of  the  Maccabeean  line.  He  loves 
her  with  the  fury  of  the  tiger,  yet  with  a  kind 
of  regal  and  splendid  abandon,  a  magnificence 
of  passion.  Her  younger  brother,  Aristobulus, 
is  the  idol  of  the  people.  Herod  fears  for  his 
throne,  and  much  against  his  will,  since  he 
knows  Mariamne's  love  for  her  brother,  he 
makes  way  with  the  youth.  Mariamne's  dis- 
covery of  this  treachery,  her  revulsion  from 
Herod,  whom  she  has  loved  truly  and  passion- 
ately, his  frenzied  efforts  to  win  her  favor 
again,  the  relentless  pressure  of  circumstance 
which  brings  about  her  death,  also,  and  the 
king's  final  madness  over  her  corpse,  form  the 
web  of  the  tragedy.  The  final  act  consists  of 
the  efforts  of  all  the  court  to  keep  from  the  tot- 
tering brain  of  Herod  knowledge  of  what  he 
has  done  to  his  queen.  It  ends  with  the  final 
revelation.  The  demands  upon  the  actor  to 
express  incipient  madness,  tortured  grief  and 


128  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

ultimate  mental  and  physical  collapse,  to  pass 
from  outbursts  of  regal  eloquence  over  the 
greatness  of  Judea  to  the  feverish  poetic  im- 
aginings of  his  own  passions,  are  tremendous. 
It  is  said  that  Mr.  Phillips  originally  wished 
Mr.  Mansfield  to  play  the  part.  Only  Mr. 
Mansfield,  in  this  country,  could  have  fully 
realized  it. 

Mr.  Faversham  did  not  fully  realize  it.  He 
missed  it  often  by  a  long  way.  His  voice, 
naturally  husky,  lacks  the  necessary  range  and 
variety,  for  one  thing.  He  himself  lacks  the 
physical  force  and  the  spiritual  bigness.  His 
technique  is  deficient  to  give  the  transitions  of 
emotion  that  vivid  sharpness  which  Mr.  Mans- 
field knew  so  well  how  to  impart  and  which  the 
Italian  Novelli  makes  indescribably  thrilling. 
Mr.  Faversham  lacks,  too,  imagination,  the 
ability  to  pause  at  the  proper  moment  and  with 
some  gesture  or  pantomime  or  other  physical 
act  heighten  the  significance  of  the  scene.  He 
wants  variety  as  well.  Yet,  granted  all  these 
things,  the  new  William  Faversham  disclosed 
as  Herod  a  passionate  sincerity,  a  clear  and  not 
unmusical  reading  of  the  verse,  a  well-planned 
and  consistently  maintained  conception  of  his 
part,  and  a  dignified  breadth  of  execution, 
which  carried  the  salient  outlines  of  Herod 
across  the  footlights,  if  it  did  not  quite  fill  them 
out,  and  which  was  not  without  its  moments  of 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  129 

keen  emotional  effect.  There  was  a  touch  of 
splendor,  for  example,  as  he  spoke  the  lines : 

"  I  dreamed  last  night  of  a  dome  of  beaten  gold, 
To  be  a  counter  glory  to  the  sun. 
There  shall  the  eagle  blindly  dash  himself, 
There  the  first  beam  shall  strike,  and  there  the 

moon 
Shall  aim  all  night  her  argent  archery." 

And  there  was  tragic  grief  and  plastic  beauty 
in  his  final  cry  over  Mariamne's  body  and  his 
dumb  standing  beside  it,  seeing  yet  sightless, 
while  the  awed  throngs  murmured,  "  Hail 
Herod,  Herod,  King  of  the  Jews."  Such  a 
Faversham  is  a  new  Faversham  surely. 

More  remarkable  was  the  transformation  of 
Miss  Julie  Opp,  who  acted  Mariamne.  She  has 
caught  her  husband's  fire  of  ambition  and  she 
has  been  born  in  it  anew.  Once  an  actress  of 
affected  pose  and  apparent  insincerity,  she 
played  Mariamne  with  a  sincerity  so  vivid 
that  it  stabbed.  All  her  posturing  and  pose 
had  dropped  away;  and  not  only  did  she 
plan  and  consistently  hold  to  a  definite  con- 
ception of  her  part,  but  this  conception  was  fine 
and  true,  dignified,  womanly,  large,  and  tragic. 
Moreover,  she  has  somehow  gained  the  techni- 
cal means  to  make  such  a  conception  manifest. 
Her  grief  she  expressed  largely  and  simply; 


130  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

and  her  revulsion  from  Herod  was  the  more 
poignant  because  she  was  able  to  indicate 
clearly  in  the  midst  of  it  how  deep  the  love  had 
been  which  he  had  killed.  To  do  that  is  to  act. 
Perhaps  what  more  of  our  players  need  is  the 
incentive  and  the  opportunity.  The  lesser  parts 
were  filled  much  as  we  have  come  to  expect 
them  to  be  filled  in  attempts  at  the  poetic 
drama.  But,  in  the  midst  of  the  opulent  set- 
ting which  Mr.  Faversham  has  given  the  play, 
the  actors  had  been  trained  to  move  with  pre- 
cision  and  significance.  There  was  little  that 
was  meaningless  in  the  running  about  of  the 
mobs,  the  occasional  inburst  of  pageantry  and 
pomp,  and  nothing  which  was  not  dignified  and 
in  keeping  with  the  high  mood  of  the  tragedy. 
Indeed,  the  effect  of  suspense,  of  impending 
doom,  of  large  passions  and  calamities,  was 
consistently  sustained  by  the  stage  manage- 
ment; and  Mr.  Faversham  was  his  own  stage 
manager.  Whatever  the  fate  of  *'  Herod  '* 
with  the  public,  it  marks  a  new  step  forward  in 
Mr.  Faversham's  career. 


A  TEMPEST  IN  A  TEAPOT 

Lyceum,  December  13,  1909 

Mr.  Somerset  Maugham  is  not  one  of  those 
British  humorists  who  pun.     He  left  that  for 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  131 

the  weather  to  do  when  Miss  Marie  Tem- 
pest reappeared  in  New  York  in  his 
"  Penelope."  Seldom  has  a  fiercer  rain-storm 
swept  around  the  Times  Building  and  through 
Longacre  Square;  but  the  audience  that  wel- 
comed Miss  Tempest  filled  every  seat  in  the 
Lyceum  Theatre,  and  there  was  no  chill  in  its 
welcome  for  her.  Mr.  Maugham's  play  and 
Miss  Tempest's  acting  work  well  together  for 
good  to  them  that  love  amusement,  and  most 
of  us  do.  By  this  time  we  in  America  have 
taken  Mr.  Maugham's  measure.  As  somebody 
has  said,  he  does  the  bad  old  things  in  a  good 
new  way.  He  has  absolutely  nothing  to  say, 
and  he  says  it  very  agreeably.  There  are  no 
real  people,  no  real  emotions,  no  real  thoughts, 
no  real  situations,  in  his  plays.  There  is  not 
even  any  real  conversation  in  them.  All  the 
characters  talk  alike,  most  of  the  time  in  rather 
bookish  epigrams,  which  are  bright  enough  to 
pass  for  smart  speech  with  the  average  theatre 
audience.  It  is  all  absolutely  artificial,  abso- 
lutely machine  made,  and  Mr.  Maugham  him- 
self, as  he  has  taken  the  trouble  to  inform  the 
world  in  various  interviews,  does  not  take  it 
seriously.  Naturally,  then,  nobody  else  does. 
It  has,  however,  a  specious  kind  of  drawing- 
room  glitter.  Mr.  Maugham's  personages  are 
very  well  dressed  and  obviously  belong  to  our 
"  better  classes,"  while  they  speak  and  act  with 


132  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

a  sort  of  diluted  Shavian  sparkle  that  now 
and  then  makes  them  seem  like  figures  of 
comedy. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Mr.  Maugham  writes 
farce  and  nothing  more.  Some  of  us  like  farce 
to  be  more  frank;  we  enjoy  better  the  laughter 
that  holds  its  sides  and  puts  on  no  airs.  But 
you  cannot  please  everybody,  and  Mr.  Mau- 
gham contrives  to  please  a  great  majority,  with 
the  least  offense  to  the  minority  —  the  dream- 
ers of  dreams  and  the  poor,  humorless  lovers 
of  reality,  who  think  that  the  stage  has  some 
connection  with  life.  Of  a  piece  with  Mr. 
Maugham's  plays.  Miss  Tempest's  acting  is 
clever,  humorous,  pleasing,  and  absolutely  arti- 
ficial. It  has  abundant  theatrical  effectiveness 
and  absolutely  no  dramatic  illusion.  Miss 
Tempest  makes  her  "  points  "  unerringly  but 
she  never  suggests  a  passion.  She  is  never  a 
person  but  a  clever  performer.  Again,  like 
Mr.  Maugham,  she  never  takes  what  she  is 
doing  seriously.  He  utters  interviews,  and  she 
winks  at  the  audience.  On  the  whole,  her  winks 
arc  more  forgivable  than  his  interviews,  be- 
cause they  are  so  much  better  natured. 

The  theme  of  "  Penelope  "  is  the  winning 
back  of  a  husband  by  his  wife,  who  adopts  the 
policy  of  throwing  him  much  with  the  other 
woman,  of  abandoning  her  former  loving  ways, 
of  making  herself  desirable  again  by  becoming 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  133 

inacessible  —  an  old  thing  in  a  new  dress  quite 
according  to  Mr.  Maugham's  formula.  The 
wife,  whose  name  is  Penelope,  is  married  to  a 
doctor.  It  is  the  doctor's  excuse  when  he  leaves 
her  daily  to  see  the  other  woman,  that  he  is 
going  to  the  bedside  of  a  mythical  Mrs.  Mack, 
who  is  very  ill.  About  once  a  week  Mrs.  Mack 
has  to  have  an  operation,  an  all-day  job,  which 
oddly  falls  on  race-days.  There  is,  for  in- 
stance, the  Derby  operation,  and  the  Sandown. 
Finally  Mrs.  Mack  gets  a  little  better  and  is 
about  to  be  moved  to  Paris,  with  the  doctor's 
aid,  when  Penelope,  who  has  seen  through  the 
myth  all  the  while,  plays  her  last  card  and  suc- 
ceeds in  winning  back  her  husband.  The  other 
woman,  unaware  that  Penelope  even  suspects, 
is  beguiled  from  one  fabrication  about  Mrs. 
Mack  to  another  by  the  triumphant  and  re- 
morseless Penelope  who,  in  a  comical  scene, 
finally  tells  her  that  Mrs.  Mack  is  dead.  The 
other  woman,  supposing  a  symbol  in  this,  weeps. 
Penelope,  hiding  her  mirth,  weeps  also  — 
crocodile  tears,  which  the  other  woman  fancies 
are  shed  seriously  for  her  husband's  pa- 
tient. Here  there  is  double  meaning  and  sug- 
gestive by-play:  a  capital  scene,  and  one  capi- 
tally fitted  to  Miss  Tempest.  All  ends,  of 
course,  as  it  should  —  in  a  play. 

Miss  Tempest,   indeed,   is  from  curtain  to 
curtain  the  same  bubbling,  vital,  arch,  piquant, 


134  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

and  faintly  acid  comedian  of  old.  She  has  the 
old  manner  of  playing  frankly  to  the  audience, 
winking  at  them,  delivering  to  them  her 
"  asides,"  cultivating  the  ways  and  not  a  few 
of  the  tricks  of  Rejane  herself.  She  has  the 
old,  infectious,  explosive  laugh,  like  a  cough 
gone  wrong,  that  never  fails  to  amuse  the  audi- 
ence, that  she  uses  too  often  and  that  she  can- 
not forgo  at  moments  when  the  personage  she 
is  acting,  though  not  Miss  Tempest,  would  be 
doing  anything  but  laughing.  She  has  the 
same  expressive  face,  so  devoid  of  any  sugges- 
tion of  the  serious  or  the  tragic,  so  nervously 
alive  to  irony  and  fun.  She  has  the  same  small, 
trim,  active  body,  vital  and  exuberant.  Better 
still,  she  has  the  same  sharp,  clear-cut  enuncia- 
tion, which  can  deliver  staccato  speeches  with 
great  raj)idity  and  no  loss  of  clearness,  and  the 
technical  skill  to  give  point  to  each  speech,  to 
get  its  full  significance  to  the  audience,  no 
matter  how  fast  it  is  delivered.  Personality 
aside.  Miss  Tempest  has  a  technical  equipment 
for  comedy  that  it  is  a  pleasure  to  watch  in 
action.  She  lacks  the  power  to  suggest  sin- 
cerity. She  cannot  create  the  illusion  of  real 
characters.  But  neither  can  Mr.  Maugham. 
So,  working  together,  they  evolve  an  evening's 
entertainment  that  is  interesting  for  its  dexter- 
ity and  for  its  farcical  sprightliness.  But  what 
a  company  Miss  Tempest  has  brought  with  her 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  135 

from  England!  Almost  any  American  com- 
pany which  has  gone  to  that  capital  would  shine 
beside  it. 


MR.  KLEIN  TACKLES  THE  COURTS 

Hudson,  December  27,  1909 

There  come  times  when  the  critic  who  has 
urged  the  dramatists  to  forsake  the  pasteboard 
realms  of  storybook  tradition  for  the  actual 
world  feels  grave  doubts  concerning  his  own 
wisdom.  If  the  critic  could  only  be  as  sure  of 
himself  as  Charles  Klein,  for  example,  is !  Mr. 
Klein  is  ready  to  tackle  any  problem  of  the 
actual  world  and  solve  it  in  three  or  at  the  most 
four  acts  —  the  Standard  Oil  Company  and 
similar  trusts,  capital  and  labor,  the  police  sys- 
tem, and  now,  in  his  most  recent  play,  '*  The 
Next  of  Kin,"  shown  in  New  York  at  the 
LIudson  Theatre,  the  general  injustice  of 
the  law  and  the  abuse  of  medical  jurisprudence. 
These  are  a  few  of  the  simple  little  questions  to 
which  Mr.  Klein  has  addressed  his  intellect, 
that  Mr.  Jones's  "  great  realities  of  modern 
life  "  may  not  be  missed  from  the  Americaa 
drama.  Looking  over  the  list  of  Mr.  Klein's 
plays,  and  especially  watching  his  latest  drama 
unfold,  one  cannot  help  speculating  just  how 


136  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

passionately  Mr.  Klein  wishes  to  regulate  the 
trusts,  adjust  the  differences  between  capital 
and  labor,  correct  police  abuses  and  expedite 
legal  justice,  or  how  far  his  interest  in  these 
problems  is  that  of  the  playmaker  seizing  on 
"  timely  "  themes. 

One  cannot  help  speculating  further  just 
how  much  Mr.  Klein  knows  about  these  grave 
and  intricate  matters.  To  know  enough  about 
one  of  them  to  produce  a  work  of  art  concern- 
ing it,  of  real  significance,  would  satisfy  the 
ordinary  mind.  To  know  enough  about  all  of 
them  to  treat  all  significantly  implies  the  pos- 
session of  genius,  and  we  are  not  quite  ready 
yet  to  declare  Mr.  Klein  a  genius.  There  is 
something  spurious  about  his  plays  of  contem- 
porary social  and  economic  problems.  It  is 
hard  to  take  them  quite  seriously,  even  the  best 
of  them,  like  "  The  Lion  and  the  Mouse,"  or 
even  to  say  with  confidence  that  they  mean 
well,  because  it  is  impossible  to  detect  behind 
them  any  of  the  reformer's  passion.  After  all, 
the  drama  of  contemporary  problems  is  only 
valuable  above  other  drama  when  it  is  born  of 
wisdom  and  written  with  sincerity.  It  must 
be  just,  true,  yet  passionately  in  earnest.  All 
of  these  things  "  The  Next  of  Kin  "  is  not. 
Seldom  has  a  duller,  more  preposterous,  ill- 
informed,  ill-digested,  inconclusive  and  appar- 
ently mechanical  piece  of  playmaking  reached 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  137 

the  stage  under  the  name  of  a  supposedly  lead- 
ing playwright.  It  is  not  alone,  nor  even 
chiefly,  the  clumsy  construction  and  vague, 
sudden  solution  of  the  piece  which  prevent  illu- 
sion and  effectiveness.  Rather  the  piece  betrays 
the  lack  of  any  evidence  of  a  real  knowledge 
and  grasp  of  the  subject  matter,  a  genuine  first- 
hand interest  in  this  phase  of  actual  life.  The 
incidents  are  not  probable ;  they  do  not  appear 
even  possible ;  and  certainly  they  are  not  typical. 
The  play  holds  no  illusion  from  beginning  to 
end. 

The  story  is  concerned  with  the  efforts  of 
James  Marsh  to  wrest  from  his  niece  the  for- 
tune her  father  has  willed  to  her.  James  has 
secured  the  valuable  services  of  ex- Judge  Bas- 
com  Cooley,  a  bold,  bad  man,  whose  legal 
knowledge  does  not  seem  to  be  overpowering 
so  far  as  he  gives  proof  of  it  on  the  stage,  but 
who,  you  are  informed,  "  has  never  lost  a  case," 
chiefly,  it  would  appear,  because  his  political 
pull  is  so  strong.  The  size  of  the  fortune  is 
never  named,  but  it  was  great  enough  to  induce 
Cooley  to  take  the  case  on  a  fifty  per  cent  basis. 
It  would  further  appear  that  the  girl  was  less 
than  twenty-one  (though  her  age  is  not  stated, 
and  Hedwig  Reicher,  who  played  the  part, 
looked  more),  because  the  bold,  bad  Cooley 
gets  uncle  appointed  as  her  guardian  and 
as  the  trustee  of  her  fortune.     She,  however^ 


138  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

defies  him  and  refuses  to  live  with  him.     Then 
more  extreme  measures  are  required. 

Now  it  was  perfectly  evident  from  the  girl's 
talk  and  appearance  that  she  would  very  soon 
be  of  age,  and  bad  as  our  laws  may  be,  her  at- 
torney (if  he  hadn't  been  a  fool)  could  have 
found  a  way  to  demand  an  accounting  of  her 
fortune  while  she  was  reaching  twenty-one. 
No  politician  quite  owns  all  our  courts  yet. 
Meanwhile,  she  might  have  worked.  What  did 
happen  was  this:  Cooley  sent  Dr.  Zacharie  in 
a  black  beard  to  watch  over  her,  hypnotize  her, 
and  make  her  appear  of  unsound  mind.  When 
this  excellent  specimen  of  the  medical  frater- 
nity had  accumulated  his  "  evidence,"  Cooley 
had  a  lunacy  commission  appointed,  and  their 
examination  of  the  girl  made  the  ''  great 
scene "  of  the  play.  Between  the  hypnotic 
glances  of  Dr.  Zacharie  and  the  questionings 
of  the  rest  of  the  board.  Miss  Marsh  naturally 
went  to  pieces  with  fright  and  nerves,  and  there 
Miss  Reicher  had  histrionic  opportunities  that 
she  used  fully.  The  third  member  of  the  board 
was  represented  as  neither  a  villain  nor  a  fool, 
but  a  man  of  science.  Such  a  man  would  actu- 
ally not  have  been  deceived  for  a  moment.  If 
the  scene  had  been  conceived  as  Gilbertian 
satire  it  would  have  been  excellent  drama. 
Conceived  as  serious  drama,  it  became  bur- 
lesque.     In   spite   of   Miss    Reicher's   moving 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  139 

performance,  which  denoted  with  simple  means 
and  few  gestures  or  movements,  the  growth  of 
terror,  of  nervous  tension,  of  hysteria  rising 
to  the  breaking  point,  you  watched  this  scene 
with  something  perilously  akin  to  shame.  You 
were  actually  uncomfortable  before  such  a 
travesty  of  science,  even  the  disputed  science 
of  the  alienists,  and  such  a  gross  slander  on 
legal  proceedings,  even  as  they  are  conducted 
at  their  wickedest. 

Of  course  the  poor  girl  was  committed  to  a 
private  "  rest  cure,"  and  things  looked  rosy  for 
uncle;  but  uncle's  happy-go-lucky  stepson, 
who  loved  the  persecuted  maiden,  stepped  in 
and  stumbled  upon  a  solution.  The  play  ended 
with  the  promise  that  Cooley  would  be  "  sent 
up  "  for  seven  years.  As  he  appeared  to  con- 
trol every  court  in  New  York,  it  was  not  quite 
easy  to  see  how  this  retribution  could  be 
brought  about.  To  take  this  array  of  nonsense 
seriously  as  a  "  muck-raking "  of  our  courts 
and  lunacy  commissions  is  quite  impossible, 
and  merely  as  a  story  set  forth  on  the  stage 
"  The  Next  of  Kin  "  is  disconnected  and  dull. 
Its  redeeming  features  in  performance  were  the 
acting  of  Miss  Reicher  as  the  persecuted  hero- 
ine, notable  for  its  easy  and  truthful  suggestion 
of  tortured  nerves  and  mental  suffering,  and  the 
acting  of  Wallace  Eddinger  as  the  happy-go- 
lucky  stepson.    Mr.  Eddinger  was  very  boyish, 


140  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

despite  his  hints  that  he  used  to  dine  at  Del- 
monico's  when  that  cafe  was  at  Twenty-sixth 
Street,  and  his  breezy  good  humor  and  touches 
of  true,  unaffected  feeling  brought  a  breath  of 
life  to  the  stage.  The  other  players  wrestled 
with  impossible  parts  and  were  more  to  be 
pitied  than  scorned. 


BOOTH  TARKINGTON,   SOPHOMORE 

Garrick,  January  3,  19 10 

Booth  Tarkington  has  been  out  of  Princeton 
close  on  a  score  of  years  now,  but  he  appears 
to  have  remained  a  sophomore  in  heart  and 
head.  Old  T.  E,  Brown,  the  Manx  poet,  sang 
the  joys  of  a  land  "  Where  Kate  and  I  are 
twenty-two  forever."  Brown,  however,  sang 
of  it  wistfully,  looking  back  in  memory.  Only 
Richard  Harding  Davis  and  Booth  Tarking- 
ton, perhaps,  those  literary  Peter  Pans,  those 
boy  authors  who  won't  grow  up,  have  discov- 
ered it  and  dwell  eternally  therein.  Recently 
Mr.  Tarkington  has  introduced  Harry  Leon 
Wilson  into  the  sophomore  circle,  and  the  re- 
sults of  their  joint  labors  have  been  pouring 
out  upon  the  stage  in  Fitchian  profusion  since 
the  phenomenal  i)ublic  success  of  "  The  Man 
from  Home."     Already  in  New  York  during 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  141 

the  season  of  1909-10  we  have  seen  their  sugar 
and  water  "  Springtime,"  played  by  Mabel  Tal- 
iaferro, and  their  "  Cameo  Kirby,"  played  by 
Dustin  Farnum.  Finally  at  the  Garrick  Thea- 
tre we  saw  their  latest  output,  "  Your  Humble 
Servant,"  played  by  an  actor  much  bigger  than 
the  play,  Otis  Skinner.  They  have  again  failed 
to  pass  their  examination  and  must  remain  in 
the  sophomore  class  another  year.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  in  preparation  for  this  latest  exam- 
ination they  have  been  reading  Dickens ;  he  is 
not  required  reading  in  sophomore  English 
any  more. 

"  Your  Humble  Servant "  takes  its  name, 
doubtless,  from  the  old  title  of  the  players  in 
England,  "His  Majesty's  Servants."  Mr. 
Skinner  plays  the  part  of  Lafayette  Towers,  an 
actor,  and  the  piece  treats  of  theatrical  life  and 
theatrical  folk.  But  they  are  not  the  theatrical 
folk  of  the  Gay  White  Way  nor  of  popular 
imagination.  They  are  not  the  theatrical  folk 
pictured  in  the  Sunday  newspapers  and  the  ten 
cent  magazines,  seated  in  their  motor  cars  or 
in  the  act  of  drawing  $1000  as  weekly  salary. 
Mr.  Lafayette  Towers  and  his  "  Bandit  Bride  " 
company  are  not  playing  New  York  at  all. 
Their  tour  started  in  Rahway,  N.  J.,  and  in- 
cluded such  centres  of  artistic  culture  as  Dover, 
N.  H.,  and  Athol,  Mass.  In  short,  Mr.  Lafay- 
ette  Towers    and   his    troupe    are    American 


142  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

cousins  to  Mr.  Vincent  Crummies  and  his  ag- 
gregation of  talent,  among  whom  Nicholas 
Nickleby  and  the  lean  and  hungry  Smike  found 
refuge  and  adventure.  This  relationship  does 
not  wholly  bear  out  the  Indianian  American- 
ism of  "  The  Man  from  Home,"  but  we  will  let 
that  pass. 

There  was  a  time  when  theatrical  life  "  in 
the  tall  timber  "  in  America  was  quite  as  pic- 
turesque as  anything  Dickens  could  invent  for 
the  Crummies.  Anyone  who  has  read  the  deli- 
cious Reminiscences  of  old  Sol  Smith  will  re- 
call his  story  of  the  performance  of  "  Piz- 
zarro "  when  eight  actors  played  seventeen 
parts,  and  the  star,  after  he  was  killed  in  the 
last  act,  had  to  fall  ofif  stage  so  that  he  could 
play  slow  music  while  the  curtain  fell.  But  we 
have  been  "  Syndicated "  since  those  happy, 
careless  days.  Actors  still  throw  coal  at  the 
rats  in  their  dressing-rooms  out  on  the  one  night 
stands,  and  Old  Timers  still  storm  Shak- 
speare  in  the  Opera  House  at  Athens,  Ga.  But 
life  on  the  road  is  rather  uncomfortable  than 
romantic,  rather  unsanitary  than  seductive. 
Taken  as  a  subject  for  art,  it  demands  the 
realistic  method,  and  would  emerge  as  rather 
unhappy.  But  to  treat  any  subject  realistically 
is  quite  beyond  the  powers  of  Mr.  Tarkington 
and  Mr.  Wilson.  "  Your  Humble  Servant " 
is  no  closer  to  actual  life  than  —  well,  than 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  143 

their  other  plays.  It  is  an  echo  of  the 
Crummies  episode,  a  kind  of  literary  ghost 
new-risen  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic. 

The  first  act  of  the  new  piece  takes  place  be- 
hind the  scenes  in  the  Weedsport  Opera  House, 
during  a  performance  of  "  The  Bandit's 
Bride."  Lafayette  Towers  in  romantic  cos- 
tume makes  his  entrance  from  the  supposedly 
real  stage,  pursued  by  the  applause  of  the  sup- 
posedly real  audience.  Poor  Peter  Dailey, 
when  he  made  such  an  entrance  at  Weber  and 
Fields,  used  to  look  back  and  remark,  "  Jolly 
dogs,  those  stage  hands."  Lafayette  Towers, 
who  has  been  barn-storming  all  his  life  with 
Broadway  as  his  distant  goal,  has  a  ward, 
Maggie  Druce,  a  child  of  stage  parents,  whom 
he  loves,  evidently,  more  as  a  lover  than  a  guar- 
dian; but  she  loves  Dick  Prentice,  a  stage- 
struck  youth  who  has  fled  from  his  very  rich 
parents  on  Madison  Avenue,  New  York,  and 
is  now  a  member  of  "  The  Bandit's  Bride  "  com- 
pany. What  there  is  of  drama  in  this  act  is 
given  over  to  the  vain  attempts  of  Papa  Pren- 
tice to  coax  his  boy  back  from  the  wicked,  vul- 
gar life  of  an  actor,  and  Lafayette  Towers's 
attempts  to  save  some  portion  of  his  wardrobe 
from  the  sheriff,  after  the  manager,  Isidore 
Blum,  has  skipped  with  the  receipts,  which  were 
$123. 

In  the  second  act  Lafayette,  still  cheerful,, 


14-4  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Maggie  and  Dick  are  living  in  a  New  York 
boarding-house,  looking  for  work  and  putting 
off  the  landlady.  The  lad,  of  course,  is  sick  of 
the  privation,  and  the  childish  impracticality 
and  eternal  make-believe  of  Lafayette  get  on 
his  nerves.  The  act  finally  ends  with  Maggie 
packing  him  off  home  by  pretending  she  has 
run  away  herself.  The  third  act  shows  him  in 
the  home  of  his  parents  on  Madison  Avenue, 
where  a  very  *'  swell  "  entertainment  is  being 
given  and  where  Lafayette  and  Maggie  come 
to  do  a  turn,  evidently  without  realizing  whose 
house  it  is.  Here  the  only  real  drama  is  sup- 
plied by  a  scene  where  Maggie,  to  put  Dick 
off  again,  ''  for  his  good,"  declares  that  she 
loves  not  him,  but  Lafayette.  He  goes  out 
raving,  and  Lafayette  comes  to  embrace 
Maggie,  who  then  has  to  tell  him  the  truth, 
which,  of  course,  was  perfectly  obvious.  In 
the  language  Lafayette  would  have  used  him- 
self, this  is  "  old  stuff  "  —  frightfully  old  stuff. 
It  is  hardly  worthy  of  the  freshman  class. 

In  the  last  act  we  are  shown  Maggie's 
dressing-room  upon  the  occasion  of  her  final 
triumph  as  a  star.  Of  course  it  is  Lafayette 
who  has  trained  her;  he  has  been  her  Belasco, 
as  it  were  —  and  equally,  of  course,  she  at  last 
realizes  that  she  does  love  him,  after  all. 

As  a  dramatic  fabric  this  play  is  fluff;  it 
is  spun-sugar.    As  a  real  picture  of  theatrical 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  145 

life  or  a  real  comment  upon  the  theatrical 
temperament  as  opposed  to  the  worldly  way  of 
thinking  and  acting  it  is  equally  worthless. 
Its  sole  theatrical  value  is  as  a  setting  for  the 
exaggerated,  fantastic  but  exquisitely  com- 
posed and  deliciously  colored  character  of  La- 
fayette Towers,  as  Otis  Skinner  acts  him. 
Evidently  realizing  precisely  the  limitations  of 
his  play,  Mr.  Skinner  chose  to  compose  this 
character  in  the  key  of  a  Cruikshank  drawing, 
the  comic  element  exaggerated,  the  poses  and 
gestures  pictorial  and  large,  but  underneath  a 
solid  basis  of  truth.  It  is  a  ticklish  part,  when 
the  actor  is  called  upon  constantly  to  burlesque 
his  own  profession,  and  Mr.  Skinner  brings  it 
off  triumphantly.  There  was  always  the  touch 
of  the  barn-stormer  of  the  comic  cuts  and  popu- 
lar tradition  in  his  speech  and  attitude,  but 
never  did  he  quite  let  go  a  suggestion  of  under- 
lying sincerity  and  even  poetry.  For  instance, 
when  between  them  the  poor  dwellers  in  the 
flat  raked  up  $14  and  sent  Lafayette  out  to  buy 
a  stove.  Mr.  Skinner's  acting  was  inimitable 
in  its  comic  burlesque  and  its  pathetic  appeal. 
He  put  on  his  rusty  frock-coat  and  pot  hat,  he 
stuck  a  paper  flower  in  his  button-hole,  he 
swung  a  cane  under  his  arm,  drew  himself  up 
erect  and  remarked,  *'  As  for  Lord  Roseberry's 
policies,  I  care  not  for  them.  If  Lady  Hunt- 
ington calls,  say  that  I  have  gone  on  a  yachting 


146  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

trip  to  the  Solent.  In  the  meantime,  do  not 
be  surprised  to  receive  a  packet  from  Third 
Avenue  ";  and  he  strutted  out. 

Again,  when  poor  Lafayette  secured  a  one- 
line  part,  as  a  butler,  he  consoled  himself  with 
the  reflection,  grandiloquently  expressed,  that 
he  would  rather  paint  a  miniature  perfectly 
than  a  great  canvas  badly.  Mr.  Skinner  made 
this  very  comic  and  slyly  satirical,  but  he  made 
it  plain,  too,  that  the  old  actor,  after  all,  spoke 
from  a  genuine  artistic  conscience;  all  of  which 
is  only  to  say  that  Mr.  Skinner  has  the  art  and 
the  rich  technical  resources  to  make  his  points, 
as  the  saying  goes,  and  to  keep  a  character  true, 
consistent  and  human  at  the  same  time.  He 
is  an  actor,  not  a  mere  imitator  of  life.  The 
mere  imitation  of  life,  save  in  the  most  insig- 
nificant parts,  is  seldom  effective  on  the  stage. 
Mr.  Skinner,  too,  possesses  a  rare  gift  for  the 
plastically  picturesque.  His  own  poses  and  the 
groupings  he  arranged  were  treats  to  see  and 
had  about  them  the  real  Cruikshank  flavor  he 
was  evidently  after.  But,  after  all,  he  is  a  man 
much  bigger  than  this  play,  much  more  vital 
both  for  comedy  and  romance.  Its  fluffy,  un- 
real, sophomoric  love  story,  its  total  lack  of  a 
real,  sincere,  underlying  idea  either  of  satire 
or  sociology,  its  failure  to  achieve  any  dramatic 
sharpness,  make  it  but  the  most  trivial  of  plays, 
—  simply  a  frame  patched  together  for  Mr. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  147 

Skinner's  portrait.  Mr.  Skinner  does  not,  per- 
haps, belong  by  nature  to  Ibsen  and  the  reaUsts, 
but  he  belongs  to  a  man's  play;  he  belongs 
to  the  romance  which  strides  out  vitally  and 
can  persuade  grown  men  and  women,  as  well 
as  sophomores,  that  there  is  still  a  road  to 
Arcady. 


MISS  BARRYMORE  IN  "  MID- 
CHANNEL  " 

Empire,  January  31,  19 10 

A  better  illustration  could  hardly  be  desired 
than  that  furnished  at  the  Empire  Thea- 
tre by  Miss  Barrymore  of  the  statement 
frequently  made  by  the  present  writer  and 
by  many  other  observers  of  our  stage,  that 
what  our  actors  need  is  a  chance.  You 
cannot  make  a  great  interpreter  of  Beet- 
hoven out  of  your  pupil  by  keeping  him 
at  the  task  of  playing  ragtime,  and  the  public 
does  not  demand  any  such  foolishness.  But 
neither  can  you  make  a  great  actress  out  of  a 
woman,  however  talented,  by  keeping  her  at 
the  task  of  playing  fluff  and  frivol.  Yet  that 
is  exactly  what  the  theatrical  public,  more 
heterogeneous  and  easy-going  than  the  musi- 
cal,  would   seem   too   often  to   demand.     To 


148  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

satisfy  "  her  public,"  the  managers  of  Miss 
Ethel  Barrymore  have  for  many  years  kept 
her  at  the  task  of  playing  fluff  and  frivol,  and 
on  the  very  rare  occasions  when  she  tried 
something  better,  such  as  Galsworthy's  "  The 
Silver  Box,"  they  have  taken  her  failure  l<o  at- 
tract patronage  evidently  as  a  sign  that  the 
heights  were  not  for  her.  And,  indeed,  it  be- 
gan to  seem  as  if  they  were  not.  Miss  Barry- 
more  seemed  settling  into  the  rut  of  mediocrity. 
But  several  things  strange  and  wonderful  have 
happened  to  Miss  Barrymore  in  the  past  twelve 
months,  and  unto  her  has  been  born  ambition, 
too.  At  last  she  has  appeared  in  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero's  latest  play,  "  Mid-Channel  "  —  a  dire 
failure  in  England,  this  tense  and  vital  drama 
—  and  not  only  did  she  give  a  performance 
astonishingly  well  conceived  and  sharply  exe- 
cuted, considering  her  past  training  and 
achievements,  but  she  still  further  rose  to  the 
necessities  of  a  large,  ample  part  and  dis- 
covered within  herself  powers  of  emotional  ex- 
pression poignant  and  pitiful.  There  will  be 
hosts  of  the  "  Barrymore  public,"  no  doubt, 
who  will  fret  that  in  "  Mid-Channel  "  they  can- 
not laugh  with  her.  But  to  some  more  thought- 
ful men  and  women  it  is  a  source  of  rare  satis- 
faction that  at  last  the  promise  of  that  lovely 
voice  and  expressive  face  has  been  fulfilled,  and 
you  can  weep  with  her,  suffer  with  her,  under- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  149 

stand  through  the  spell  of  her  acting  a  little 
better  the  sorrows  and  perplexities  of  our  frail 
humanity.  In  short,  Miss  Barrymore  has  be- 
come an  actress. 

It  is  the  fashion  in  England  just  now  to  be- 
little Pinero.  When  a  critic  has  nothing  else  to 
do  he  writes  about  Pinero's  "  stilted  language," 
reproaches  him  for  his  choice  of  subjects,  or 
otherwise  throws  mud  at  the  idol  of  a  decade 
ago.  Yet  the  Pinero  of  "  Mid-Channel  "  is  the 
same  Pinero  and  his  choice  of  subject  which 
lately  brought  him  failure  in  England  is  just 
what  brought  him  fame  twenty  years  ago.  The 
ancient  skill  has  not  departed  nor  the  ancient 
truth  grown  dim.  "  Mid-Channel "  is  the 
tragedy  of  domestic  bickering.  We  fancy  there 
has  been  no  decline  in  bickering  during  the  past 
decade ;  if  there  has,  it  is  rather  odd  that  Max 
Beerbohm  should  be  the  man  to  discover  it. 
In  this  play,  naturally.  Sir  Arthur  does  not 
select  for  his  husband  and  wife  a  man  and  wo- 
man of  great  culture,  gentle  breeding,  wide 
interests.  Such  are  not  the  people  who  wreck 
their  lives  on  the  reef  of  bicker.  Nor  does  he 
go  down  into  the  lowest  stratum  of  society,  pos- 
sibly because  he  is  not  familiar  with  it  himself, 
nor  can  it  be  supposed  that  his  audiences  will 
be.  He  selects  for  his  characters  exactly  the 
people  of  whom  his  tragedy  is  most  typical. 

The  husband  of  "  Mid-Channel  "  is  a  broker. 


150  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

a  rather  coarse-  grained  man,  neither  good  nor 
bad,  rather  dull,  rather  over-sexed,  very  much 
under-educated,  whose  ideal  of  happiness  is 
summed  up  in  a  day  on  'change  when  the 
money  comes  his  way,  a  dinner  in  a  glittering 
cafe,  a  music  hall,  and  women.  This  is  a  man 
who  at  home  can  hardly  be  an  inspiring  com- 
panion and  who  has  not  the  character  to  rule 
his  petty  passions,  curb  his  temper,  win  peace 
by  philosophy  and  will  power.  He  is  also  a 
man  who  does  not  want  children.  The  wife 
is  better  —  at  the  start  —  than  this  man.  More 
gently  bred,  she  is  "  mated  to  a  clown."  That 
she  is  mated  to  him  is  a  pretty  sure  sign  that 
her  own  strength  of  character  is  not  great,  and 
she  yields  to  his  ways  of  life,  takes  up  his  com- 
panions, his  vocabulary,  lays  over  her  native 
self  the  discoloring  stain  of  his  vulgarity.  She 
yields  to  his  wish  to  have  no  children,  and  after 
fourteen  years  of  married  life  the  play  dis- 
closes them  at  that  point  just  short  of  middle 
age  which  the  inevitable  Pinero  "  family 
friend  "  describes  as  the  mid-channel  reef  — 
the  period  when,  as  they  say,  their  horses  have 
stopped  prancing  and  settled  down  to  a  jog, 
when  they  take  one  another  as  a  habit  and, 
childless,  bicker  over  petty  things;  when  they 
are  "  on  each  other's  nerves,"  and  yet  —  and 
here  is  the  pathetically  true  feature  of  it  — 
when  they  are  by  no  means  free  of  other  dan- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  151 

gers.  Sordid?  Yes,  perhaps.  But  how  true, 
how  typical  this  pair  is.  They  are  not  insular. 
New  York  knows  them.  Perhaps  all  races 
know  them.  Perhaps  London  knew  them  too 
well. 

It  is  this  pair  that  Sir  Arthur  studies  re- 
morselessly for  four  acts.  The  first  act  begins 
with  a  reconciliation  after  a  bicker  and  ends 
with  a  fresh  bicker,  over  what  hotel  they  shall 
go  to  in  Paris.  The  husband  is  for  a  cheap  one. 
The  wife  says  if  he  were  taking  one  of  those 
painted  ladies  pictured  in  the  illustrated  papers 
he  would  go  to  the  Ritz.  The  scene  becomes  a 
vulgar  brawl,  and  the  husband  leaves  the  house 
for  sfood.  It  is  the  last  straw.  In  the  second 
act  there  is  little  narrative  but  much  subtle 
and  fascinating  study  of  feminine  character. 
The  wife,  caught  on  the  rebound,  has  been  in- 
discreet with  one  of  her  "tame  robins,"  a  young 
man  half  a  dozen  years  or  more  her  junior. 
But  to  his  disgust  she  talks  about  her  husband. 
It  is  evident  that  she  still  loves  him,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  he  has  "  taken  up  "  with  a  wo- 
man of  unsavory  reputation.  The  wife's  moods 
alternate, — irresponsible,  baffling.  Finally  she 
ends  by  dismissing  the  young  man,  giving  as 
one  of  her  reasons  that  a  nice  young  girl  wants 
him,  and  evidently  has  a  real  claim  on  him. 

The  third  act  shows  the  husband  disgusted 
with  his  mistress.     His  rebound  has  brought 


152  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

him  no  peace,  either.  He  thinks  of  his  wife, 
beHeving  her  true.  He  dismisses  the  mistress. 
The  wife  comes  back  to  him  and  offers  him 
the  key  to  the  house  once  more.  He  makes  a 
clean  breast  of  his  escapade.  She  forgives. 
But  he  is  led  to  question  her.  The  truth  comes 
out.  "  We  are  both  sinners  together,"  she  ex- 
claims. One  is  reminded  of  the  great  situation 
in  "  Tess."  And  if  Angel  Claire  left  Tess  it  is 
small  wonder  that  this  coarse-grained  man  ap- 
plied to  his  wife  the  double  code.  He  is  decent 
enough  to  say  that  he  will  give  her  the  divorce, 
but  that  she  must  then  marry  the  "  tame 
robin."  But  the  "  tame  robin  "  has  in  his  turn 
been  caught  on  the  rebound  and  has  promised 
to  marry  the  sweet  young  ingenue.  Here, 
alike  for  him  and  for  the  wife,  is  one  of  life's 
little  ironies  that  would  please  Thomas  Hardy. 
The  husband  offers  to  let  the  wife  decide  which 
woman  the  "  tame  robin  "  shall  marry.  Per- 
haps to  vindicate  herself  in  her  own  sight,  to 
prove  that  she  still  is  decent  at  heart,  she  de- 
cides by  jumping  off  the  balcony  to  her  death. 
The  conclusion  is  logical  enough ;  but  in  work- 
ing out  his  fourth  act  Mr.  Pinero  shows  far  less 
freshness  and  skill  than  in  the  other  three;  he 
is,  in  fact,  distinctly  clumsy,  letting  the  tragic 
atmosphere  that  should  envelop  his  catas- 
trophe quite  evaporate  in  a  maze  of  exits  and 
entrances   by    all    the    personages    concerned. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  153 

The  play  does  not  rise  steadily  to  a  final  satis- 
faction of  the  senses,  like  "  Iris."  But  it  re- 
mains none  the  less  a  powerful,  absorbing, 
heart-stirring  and  profoundly  human  and  sig- 
nificant piece  of  dramatic  writing. 

And  the  surprise  of  its  peformance  —  which 
was  in  most  particulars  excellent,  well  balanced, 
and  staged  with  a  nice  regard  for  the  surface 
illusions  of  life  —  was  the  acting  of  Miss 
Barrymore.  Her  many  admirers,  gathered  in 
force,  who  evidently  knew  more  about  her  than 
they  cared  about  Pinero,  were  disposed  to 
laugh  in  the  first  act  during  the  scenes  of  her 
bickerings.  But  never  after  that  did  she  allow 
them  to  suppose  for  an  instant  that  they  were 
not  watching  a  serious  and  passionate  study  of 
a  woman's  tragedy.  She  made  it  evident  that 
her  vulgarity  was  largely  an  overlay  of  habit 
and  association  upon  a  once  sweeter  woman. 
As  she  said,  "  I  am  an  irresponsible  little  Puss, 
with  lots  of  good  in  me,  too."  The  flux  and 
change  of  her  moods,  thanks,  no  doubt,  in  part 
to  the  acid  outlines  of  Mr.  Pinero's  writing  of 
the  part,  were  surely  denoted,  and  better  than 
all  when  the  time  came  in  the  third  act  for  the 
revelation  to  her  husband  of  her  own  sin.  Miss 
Barrymore  rose  to  the  occasion  with  a  sim- 
plicity of  voice  and  action,  a  tortured  keenness 
of  facial  expression  and  a  depth  of  love  and 
remorse   and   suffering   in   her   tones,    which 


154  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

brought  a  gush  of  tears  even  to  her  tradi- 
tional pubHc.  Nor  did  she  make  the  subse- 
quent flare  of  bickering  temper  against  her 
husband's  unforgiveness  illogical  and  abrupt. 
It  was  another  indication  of  the  pitifully  vacil- 
lating and  weak  woman  that  she  was,  or  had 
become. 

Of  course,  in  such  a  part,  there  is  much 
which  Miss  Barrymore  did  not,  perhaps,  grasp. 
In  the  last  act,  especially,  she  did  not  indicate 
the  approach  of  her  impending  suicide.  Often, 
too,  she  smiled  her  old  smile,  the  smile  of  com- 
edy, when  that  smile  was  inappropriate.  Her 
face  is  not  yet  quite  under  control.  But  her 
performance  was  a  tremendous  advance  on 
anything  she  has  yet  done,  and  was  in  the  main 
consistent,  vivid,  truthful,  and  at  moments  in- 
describably touching.  Her  voice  has  a  new 
note  now,  the  note  of  tragedy,  of  suffering. 
At  any  rate,  her  assumption  of  this  role  has 
put  her  in  a  position  to  make  the  next  step  up- 
ward more  easy,  it  has  begun  to  make  for  her 
a  wider,  a  more  discriminating  public.  The 
husband  was  played  by  Charles  Dalton,  and 
played  very  well.  He,  too,  understood  the  play 
and  the  part,  and  was  bitterly  truthful  to  his 
unpleasant  and  too  common  type.  H.  Reeves 
Smith  was  excellent  as  the  family  friend,  and 
Eric  Maturin,  as  the  "  tame  robin,"  acted  ad- 
mirably and  enunciated  atrociously.    The  play 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  155 

was  witnessed  with  close  attention  by  the  audi- 
ence, and  the  "  Barrymore  pubHc  "  took  what 
comfort  they  could  of  the  fact  that  their  favor- 
ite wore  beautiful  and  becoming  gowns. 


MISS  CROTHERS  CHAMPIONS  HER 

SEX 

Comedy,  February  8,  19 lo 

"  A  Man's  World,"  the  newest  play  by  Miss 
Rachel  Crothers,  author  of  "  The  Three  of 
Us,"  fulfills  the  promise  of  that  early  piece,  cer- 
tainly much  more  than  did  her  intervening 
work.  It  was  acted  at  the  Comedy  Theatre  in 
New  York,  by  Miss  Mary  Mannering  and 
an  excellent  company,  and  by  its  uncom- 
promising allegiance  to  its  premises  (though 
the  logical  conclusion  is  not  the  happy  end- 
ing dear  to  convention),  its  searching  truth 
of  feminine  psychology,  its  air  of  quiet  but 
studied  realism,  its  obvious  significance  as  a 
comment  on  the  feminist  movement  of  the  day 
—  a  thoughful,  sympathetic,  intelligent  com- 
ment —  it  took  its  place  as  one  of  the  most 
interesting  native  dramas  brought  to  New 
York  during  the  season.  If  the  long  arm  of 
coincidence  were  not  stretched  so  far  to  make 
the  plot  conform  to  the  thesis  of  the  play,  *'  A 


156  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Man's  World  "  would  be  an  important  piece 
of  stage  literature.  As  matters  stand,  it  is  an 
interesting  and  at  times  a  moving  play,  frankly 
and  honestly  written  from  a  woman's  point  of 
view,  but  it  just  misses  the  masculinity  of 
structure  and  the  inevitableness  of  episode 
necessary  to  make  it  dramatic  literature.  It  is, 
however,  genuine  work;  it  cannot  be  over- 
looked. This  time  Miss  Crothers  seems  to  have 
come  back  to  stay. 

Consider,  first,  Miss  Crothers's  daring  in 
the  choice  of  a  theme  and  her  greater  daring 
in  her  solution  of  the  problems  that  it  raises. 
The  theme  is  that  ancient  one  so  dear  to  dram- 
atists and  writers  of  fiction  of  all  sorts  —  the 
double  moral  code.  What  the  man  demands 
of  the  woman  who  is  his,  she  does  not  demand 
nor  expect  from  him.  Or,  at  any  rate,  if  she 
vaguely  expects  it,  she  does  not  get  it.  The 
traditional  treatment  of  the  theme  is  to  devise 
a  situation  in  which  the  erring  man  is  forgiven 
by  the  woman,  who  then  in  her  turn  asks  for- 
giveness, only  to  be  refused.  That  was  the 
situation  in  "  Tess,"  and  that  was  the  situation 
only  a  week  earlier  in  Pinero's  "  Mid-Channel." 
But  it  is  not  the  situation  in  Miss  Crothers's 
play.  The  woman,  it  turns  out,  has  done  noth- 
ing whatever  that  needs  forgiveness.  She  has 
a  little  theory  —  women  do  get  such  theories 
tenaciously  into  their  heads  nowadays  —  that 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  157 

she  does  not  care  to  have  to  forgive  the  man  she 
loves  for  any  unsavory  episodes  connected  with 
"  the  Hving  of  a  man's  Hfe."  However,  just 
such  ^n  occasion  arises.  The  episode  is  par- 
ticularly unsavory  and  she  loves  the  man  par- 
ticularly hard.  Yet  she  does  not  forgive  him. 
She  stands  out  partly  from  principle,  if  she  is 
a  woman.  But  chiefly  there  is  that  in  her 
nature  which  will  not  permit  her  to  forgive. 
So  the  bewildered  and  somewhat  vexed  man 
goes  off  forever  as  the  curtain  falls.  This  is 
a  new  twist  to  the  old  situation;  this  is  the 
new  woman,  indeed ;  and  this,  a  woman's  play, 
faces  the  old  problem  without  cant  or  sentimen- 
tality, and  lands  a  good  square  blow. 

The  scene  of  "A  Man's  World"  is  laid 
"  in  an  old  New  York  house  near  Washington 
Square,"  and  it  is  easy  to  surmise  that  the  for- 
mer "  A  Club,"  which  inhabited  lower  Fifth 
Avenue,  gave  the  suggestion  of  this  home  of 
men  and  women  living  a  semi-Puritanical, 
semi-Bohemian  life  and  earning  their  livings 
by  writing  novels  about  the  East  Side,  paint- 
ing miniatures,  constructing  "  the  great  Ameri- 
can drama,"  and  otherwise  serving  the  causes 
of  sweetness  and  light.  The  most  popular 
member  of  the  household  is  Miss  Ware,  a 
novelist  and  worker  among  the  East-Side  girls, 
who  has  adopted  a  small  boy  called  Kiddie. 
She  says  she  took  him  under  her  wing  in  Paris, 


158  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

when  his  mother  died,  abandoned  by  the  un- 
known father.  But  if  Miss  Ware  is  popular 
with  the  men,  she  does  not  escape  the  tongues 
of  the  women,  and  particularly  that  of  a  singer 
who  is  jealous  of  her.  One  of  the  men  in  the 
house  —  the  only  man  successful  from  a 
worldly  point  of  view  —  is  Malcolm  Gaskell,  a 
newspaper  editor.  (Miss  Crothers  did  not  in- 
tend to  be  satiric.)  The  singer  notes  and 
broods  over  a  resemblance  to  him  in  the  face  of 
the  child,  and  puts  the  obvious  construction 
upon  it.  Gradually  —  a  little  too  gradually  for 
dramatic  purposes  —  the  situation  is  forced. 
Gaskell  is  the  first  to  suspect  the  gossip,  be- 
lieves that  it  does  not  concern  him  but  only 
Miss  Ware,  and  gives  a  great  sigh  of  joy  when 
she  swears  that  the  child  is  not  hers.  She  tells 
how  she  took  it  from  the  dying  mother  and 
how  from  that  day  she  has  hated  the  father 
who  let  it  come  nameless  into  the  world.  But 
gradually  the  further  revelation  comes  to  both 
of  them  that  Gaskell  is  the  father.  He  does  not 
so  much  ask  forgiveness  as  he  seems  to  demand 
it,  or  rather  to  expect  it  as  a  matter  of  course. 
But  he  does  not  get  it.  This  may  be  a  man's 
world,  as  he  says,  but  Miss  Ware  cannot  see 
it  that  way.  Such  is  the  main  drift  of  the  story: 
a  long  strain  on  coincidence,  certainly,  but 
carefully  calculated  to  fit  the  thesis. 

To  sketch  this   skeleton,   however,   is  only 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  159 

faintly  to  indicate  the  merit  of  Miss  Crothers's 
drama.  Her  men,  to  be  sure,  did  not  always 
escape  the  charge  of  being  dummies  in  trous- 
ers, but  she  filled  her  house  of  Bohemians  with 
such  truthful  and  appealing  working  women 
and  set  them  in  situations  so  admirably  de- 
signed to  bring  out  the  pathos  and  social  sig- 
nificance of  their  lot  that  they  alone  would 
make  the  play  worth  while.  One  of  them,  for 
instance,  was  a  certain  Clara  Oaks,  played  with 
rare  skill  and  emotional  sympathy  by  Miss 
Helen  Ormsbee.  Clara  painted  miniatures. 
She  had  come  from  the  circles  where  daughters 
are  supported  in  ease,  but  she  was  a  poor  rela- 
tion, and,  still  further,  had  ideas  of  her  own 
about  supporting  herself  by  "  art."  She  was 
a  weak  and  rather  silly  creature,  plain  of  face 
and  hopelessly  without  talent.  The  other  art- 
ists gently  "  guyed "  her  through  two  acts. 
But  in  the  third  act,  after  she  had  held  an  ex- 
hibition of  her  work  and  nobody  had  come,  she 
broke  down,  and  there  was  no  thought  of 
"  guying  "  any  more.  She  became  as  pathetic 
a  figure  as  the  stage  has  seen  in  many  a  day. 
"  I  am  one  of  those  everlasting  women,"  she 
wept,  "  that  the  world  is  full  of,  with  nobody 
to  take  care  of  them,  and  who  can't  take  care 
of  themselves.  I  never  had  an  offer  of  mar- 
riage. I  'd  marry  anybody  who  would  pay  the 
bills.    Any  little  runt  of  a  man  can  marry,  and 


160  AT    THE    NEW   THEATRE 

have  a  home  and  a  family.  Oh,  oh,  I  want  to 
be  pretty  and  bad !  "  This  poor  little  creature 
was  painted  so  truthfully  and  played  so  poig- 
nantly by  the  actress  that  men  and  women  alike 
in  the  audience  were  blinded  by  tears  during 
her  outbreak. 

And  so,  later,  when  Miss  Ware  had  explained 
to  the  jealous  singer  that  Kiddie  was  not  her 
child,  and  made  the  gossip  believe  it,  the  two  of 
them  discussed  the  peril  of  love  and  the  power 
of  man  in  words  quite  in  keeping  with  their 
traits  in  the  drama  but  also  of  penetrating  in- 
sight and  a  kind  of  grim  pathos.  "  You  can't 
stir  up  any  man's  life,"  said  the  singer. 
*'  You  're  lucky  if  it  looks  right  on  top."  And 
the  novelist,  the  woman  of  dreams  and  the- 
ories, fought  back  the  suggestion,  till  memory 
smote  her  of  that  resemblance  of  Kiddie  to  the 
man  she  loved.  In  some  way  unaccountable, 
that  scene,  as  Miss  Crothers  has  written  it, 
seems  far  larger  than  the  small  room  on  the 
stage  of  the  Comedy  Theatre.  Then  and 
there  these  two  characters  speak  indeed  for 
themselves,  but  also  for  their  sex.  We  may 
desire  a  more  smooth,  orderly  and  swift  devel- 
opment of  the  narrative  than  Miss  Crothers 
could  compass,  and  a  less  strained  plot,  less 
warped  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  thesis, 
less  obviously  "  doctored."  We  may  condemn 
*'  A  Man's  World  "  pretty  severely  for  these 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  161 

faults.  But  the  fact  remains  that  the  play  has 
something  about  it  of  passionate  sincerity  and 
feminine  insight  which  redeems  many  faults 
and  makes  it  significant,  interesting,  and  at 
times  deeply  moving. 

The  piece  was  acted  and  staged  in  a  manner 
quite  in  keeping  with  its  mood  and  style.  Miss 
Mannering,  who  has  matured  greatly  in  face 
and  figure,  understood  perfectly  what  she  was 
about,  and  she  was  convincingly  the  free  and 
hberal-minded  novelist,  attractive  to  men  and 
warm-hearted  to  all.  She  convincingly  loved 
the  man  and  she  convincingly  suffered  alter- 
nate torments  of  doubt  and  revulsions  of  her 
finer  feelings  when  the  crisis  came.  She  played 
straight  for  the  substance  of  the  drama. 
Charles  Richman  was  her  erring  lover,  making 
as  convincing  as  he  could  Miss  Crothers's  some- 
what feminine  idea  of  a  very  masculine  man. 
It  must  be  admitted  that  her  idea  of  a  masculine 
man  is  rather  too  apt  to  be  a  vicious  man. 
But  to  Miss  Helen  Ormsbee  fell  the  most  mov- 
ing moment  in  the  performance  and  she  lived 
up  to  it.  The  author  was  present  at  the  New 
York  opening  and  was  duly  applauded,  but  she 
would  not  come  forth  to  make  a  speech.  That, 
wisely,  she  still  leaves  to  the  merely  male 
dramatists. 


162  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

"PILLARS    OF    SOCIETY"   AND   MRS. 
FISKE 

Lyceum  Theatre,  March  28,  19 10 

Mrs.  Fiske's  latest  adventure  in  Ibsen  was 
as  Lona  Hessel  in  his  satiric  comedy,  "  Pil- 
lars of  Society."  Mrs.  Fiske  has  in  the 
past  mounted  various  plays  by  Ibsen,  —  "A 
Doll's  House,"  '' Hedda  Gabler,"  and  two 
seasons  ago  "  Rosmersholm."  In  contrast 
especially  to  the  last,  "  Pillars  of  Society " 
is  easily  comprehensible  to  any  theatre-goer, 
and  by  the  same  token,  if  you  like,  it  is 
much  less  characteristically  Ibsen.  Written  in 
1877,  its  first  act  shows  the  dramatist  not  yet 
free  from  clumsy  methods  of  exposition  and 
the  last  act  shows  him  deliberately  and  almost 
ludicrously  dragging  in  a  "  happy  ending  "  in 
obedience  to  sentimental  considerations.  The 
first  act  is  in  strange  contrast,  for  example,  to 
the  first  act  of  "  Hedda  Gabler."  Ibsen  uses  it 
wholly  for  exposition,  whereas  in  "  Hedda 
Gabler "  he  had  fully  found  himself ;  the 
drama  begins  with  the  first  words  and  the 
exposition  advances  in  the  same  speeches  that 
further  the  action.  In  still  stranger  contrast 
with  the  Ibsen  of  maturer  years  is  the  last 
act  of  "  Pillars  of  Society."     By  every  token 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  163 

a  tragedy  impends.  That  arch  hypocrite,  Con- 
sul Bernick,  has  sent  out  a  ship  with  a  rotten 
bottom,  to  kill,  as  he  supposed,  his  enemy. 
His  own  son  has,  unknown  to  him,  boarded 
her.  The  whole  rotten  bottom  of  his  own  life, 
patched  with  lies  and  hypocrisy,  is  thus 
ready  to  break,  while  the  waters  of  retribution 
engulf  him.  But  suddenly  Ibsen  calls  down 
the  god  from  the  machine;  he  gives  Consul 
Bernick  a  change  of  heart ;  he  rescues  the  son 
from  the  ship;  he  even  brings  the  ship  back 
to  port;  he  rushes  about  in  the  last  act,  in- 
deed, quite  as  if  he  were  remaking  his  play  at 
the  request  of  an  American  manager. 

After  all,  it  is  rather  pleasant  to  realize  that 
the  grim  old  Norseman  was  human.  He  was 
not  born  with  his  technique  nor  was  he  al- 
ways above  popular  prejudice.  And  in  "  Pil- 
lars of  Society,"  in  spite  of  the  over-elaboration 
of  a  rather  simple  plot  and  the  decidedly  local 
atmosphere  of  its  scenes  and  characters,  he  did 
lay  about  him  with  joyous  strokes  at  a  brand 
of  hypocrisy  that  is  by  no  means  confined  to 
the  Norway  of  1877.  Indeed,  there  is  some- 
thing almost  pitifully  personal  to  us  in  Amer- 
ica just  now  about  this  play.  Consul  Bernick 
and  his  fellow-pillars  of  that  smug,  narrowly 
Puritanic  Norse  seaport  were  hailed  as  pillars 
because  they  were  the  richest  men  in  town, 
because  they  gave  parks  and  schools,  because 


164  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

they  brought  "  improvements,"  such  as  rail- 
roads. They  were  pillars  because  they  stood 
under  the  commercial  prosperity  of  the  place; 
but  it  will  be  noted  that  before  they  announced 
the  branch  railroad  to  the  town  they  bought 
up  all  the  land  adjacent  to  it,  at  a  dollar  an 
acre.  It  will  be  noted  also  that  self-aggran- 
dizement was  the  real  motive  of  most  of  their 
acts,  and  their  smug  domestic  virtues  were  a 
pose  that  made  the  self-aggrandizement  more 
easily  painted  to  their  fellows  as  love  for  the 
welfare  of  society. 

They  are  not  the  exclusive  possession  of 
Norway,  these  men.  Nor  is  the  society  which 
accepts  them  at  their  own  valuation  and  hails 
them  as  its  pillars  confined  to  that  drab  land. 
The  society  which  can  hail  Wall  Street  as  its 
foundation  is  not  a  whit  less  parochial,  and  the 
courts  and  legislative  committees  of  our  fair 
and  faultless  land  have  in  recent  years  uncov- 
ered a  few  Consul  Bernicks,  to  say  the  least. 
Our  society  is  not  so  narrowly  Puritanic  as 
that  of  Ibsen's  seaport  town,  but  have  our  pil- 
lars of  society  proved  any  more  secure  when 
their  foundations  were  investigated?  Society 
cannot  be  supported  on  a  lie.  "  Nothing  can 
bring  you  peace  but  yourself,  nothing  can 
bring  you  peace  but  the  triumph  of  principle," 
said  Emerson.  That  is  Ibsen's  message  in 
"  Pillars    of    Society,"    as    in    most    of    his 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  165 

work.  It  is  ringing  with  a  bitter  scorn  of 
mere  commercial  success  at  the  expense  of  the 
human  soul.  And  it  has  its  message  for  the 
New  York  of  to-day.  Perhaps,  indeed,  we  are 
only  just  ready  for  it.  It  took  a  Hughes  and 
a  Roosevelt  to  prepare  us  for  Ibsen. 

While  the  message  of  the  play  is  thus  ting- 
lingly  contemporaneous,  its  technique  is  not. 
In  fact  "  Pillars  of  Society "  comes  out  on 
the  stage  curiously  old-fashioned,  not  to  say 
clumsy,  in  construction.  In  the  reading  of  the 
play,  the  first  act  seems  the  poorest.  In  ac- 
tion the  first  act  is  the  best,  because  it  holds 
most  closely  the  attention  through  its  humor. 
Ibsen  is  plainly  not  yet  master  of  his  material. 
Tedious  explanations  clog  the  plot  at  every 
turn.  No  doubt  a  fund  of  local  color  and 
witty  dialogue  which  conspired  to  make  the 
original  popular  are  inevitably  lost  here,  while 
Mr.  Archer's  translation  does  not  help  any. 
But  the  public,  after  all,  is  not  greatly  con- 
cerned with  technique.  The  satire  of  the  play, 
the  vividness  and  variety  of  the  character 
drawing,  the  mordant  humor,  are  what  appeal ; 
and  doubtless  these  qualities  led  Mrs.  Fiske, 
a  shrewd  woman,  to  revive  it  —  the  event  has 
proved  wisely.  Moreover,  the  part  of  Lona 
affords  her  an  opportunity,  brief  but  sharp, 
for  brilliant  high  comedy.  Perhaps,  too,  she 
felt  that  the  increased  popularity  of  Ibsen  in 


166  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

recent  years  would  bring  a  belated  success  for 
this  piece.  The  part  of  Lona,  to  be  sure,  is 
hardly  the  leading  part  in  the  play,  or  would 
not  be  with  any  other  actress  portraying  it. 
Mrs.  Fiske  has  never  been  one  to  dread  com- 
petition with  her  leading  man.  For  the  part 
of  Consul  Bernick  she  selected  Holbrook  Blinn, 
her  companion  in  "  Salvation  Nell,"  and  surely 
as  good  a  choice  as  could  be  made  for  the 
character.     He  played  this  deluded  hypocrite 

—  for,  if  Bernick  was  a  villain,  he  was,  after 
all,  a  product  as  well  as  a  pillar  of  his  society 

—  with  admirable  dignity,  poise,  expressive 
detail  and  delightful  diction.  It  may  be  he 
was  rather  too  dignified,  too  urbane,  for  this 
Norse  town,  and  rather  too  restrained  in  his 
suggestion  of  hypocrisy  for  this  satiric  comedy. 
But  his  method  of  playing  at  least  had  the 
merit  of  making  plausible  his  change  of  heart 
at  the  close,  if  it  did  not  make  quite  plausible 
his  villany  at  the  beginning. 

It  was  in  competition  with  an  actor  of  this 
stamp,  playing  the  major  personage  in  the 
drama,  that  Mrs.  Fiske  enacted  the  somewhat 
sketchy  character  of  Lona.  And,  of  course, 
her  performance  gained  rather  than  lost  by  the 
juxtaposition.  It  is  the  devotion  of  Lona  to 
Bernick,  who  had  jilted  her  fifteen  years  be- 
fore, that  brings  her  back  to  Norway,  where, 
with  her  direct,  humorous,  clear-sighted  mind 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  167 

and  pungent  speech,  she  is  in  vivid  contrast 
to  the  other  characters,  and  where  she  labors 
in  her  sly  woman's  way  to  drive  Bernick  vol- 
untarily to  confess  his  hypocrisy  and  stand 
or  fall,  at  last,  his  true  self.  She  is  at  once 
a  character  in  Ibsen's  play  and  Ibsen  himself 
as  chorus.  As  Mrs.  Fiske  plays  her,  of  course, 
you  realize  only  the  character.  What  an  hon- 
est, fresh-minded,  unequivocal,  humorous  per- 
son she  makes  her !  Her  closing  speech  in  the 
second  act  to  the  puzzled  "  What  am  I  to 
do?  "  of  Bernick  —  "  You  are  to  rise  and  sup- 
port society,  brother-in-law  "  —  was  a  master- 
piece of  satiric  comedy.  But  even  finer  was 
her  acting  of  the  closing  scene,  when  Bernick 
was  making  his  impassioned  confession  to  the 
mob.  Here  the  better  and  the  more  convinc- 
ing was  the  acting  of  Mr.  Blinn,  of  course  the 
more  convincing  became  the  by-play  of  Mrs. 
Fiske.  She  sat  quite  still,  on  her  face  the  joy 
of  her  spiritual  victory  over  his  baser  nature 
writing  itself  out  most  marvellously  and  finally 
expressing  itself  in  a  little  smothered  sob  of 
triumphant  love  which  no  other  American  ac- 
tress would  have  invented,  or  could  have  exe- 
cuted if  she  had. 

But  the  part  of  Lona,  pungently  as  she 
illuminates  its  humors,  vividly  as  she  points 
its  satiric  lesson  and  brings  to  life  its  qualities 
of  womanly  devotion  to  the  integrity  of  the 


( 


168  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

human  spirit,  to  the  soul,  not  the  body  of  her 
lover,  is  not  a  part  quite  worthy  the  rich 
powers  of  her  prime.  She  is  too  large  for  it; 
twenty  ampler  parts  seem  to  await  the  opu- 
lence of  her  powers.  She  cribs  herself  —  and 
her  audiences  watch  in  regret.  Mrs.  Fiske 
to-day  is  the  one  player  most  fitted  by  intel- 
lectual power  and  technical  resources  to  be- 
come the  leader  of  our  stage.  In  part  she  has 
led,  and  does  lead  it,  by  producing  with  self- 
effacing  devotion  such  works  as  "  Pillars  of 
Society."  But  of  her  we  may  also  demand  the 
leadership  and  inspiration  of  great  perform- 
ances in  great  roles. 


"LITTLE    EYOLF"    AND    NAZIMOVA 

Nazimova's  Thirty-ninth  Sit^eet  Theatre,  April  i8,  1910 

The  latest  of  New  York's  tiny  play- 
houses, modelled  largely  on  the  Maxine 
Elliott  Theatre,  is  on  West  Thirty-ninth 
Street,  almost  next  door  to  Miss  Elliott's 
playhouse,  and  is  called  "  Nazimova's  Thirty- 
ninth  Street  Theatre."  It  seats  less  than 
seven  hundred  persons,  but  it  is  cleverly 
constructed  to  seem  of  comfortable  size  —  not 
a  mere  closet  —  and  it  is  pleasing  to  the  eye. 
The  opening  play  was  Ibsen's  "  Little  Eyolf," 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  169 

and  the  Rita  was,  of  course,  Mme.  Nazimova, 
who  gave  a  performance  of  such  superlative 
fineness  that  even  those  people  who  find  the 
later  dramas  of  Ibsen  quite  beyond  their  grasp 
were  completely  subdued  by  her  spell.  It  easily 
ranks  as  one  of  the  most  potent  acting  achieve- 
ments of  the  winter. 

"  Little  Eyolf  "  was  written  and  published 
in  1894,  and  it  is  still  ahead  of  the  times  in 
the  American  theatre.  It  is  ahead  of  the  times 
because  it  contains  the  minimum  of  what  we 
popularly  understand  (and  demand)  by  "  ac- 
tion," and  the  maximum  of  that  exposition  of 
the  spiritual  results  of  action.  Ibsen  never 
wrote  a  finer  scene  in  the  popular  acceptance 
of  what  is  "  dramatic "  than  the  death  of 
little  Eyolf  at  the  end  of  act  one.  But  all 
the  rest  of  the  play  is  but  the  revelation  of 
what  goes  on  in  the  souls  of  the  mother  and 
father  after  that  death.  Our  theatrical  public 
is  not  yet  ready  to  call  this  drama;  and,  curi- 
ously, because  it  is  not  of  the  traditional  stufif 
of  the  theatre  it  seems  badly  to  muddle  the 
comprehension  of  an  audience  who  would  find 
it,  in  a  book,  told  by  means  of  exposition  rather 
than  dialogue,  probably  quite  understandable. 
Because  we  do  not  see  what  we  are  looking 
for,  we  do  not  understand  what  we  see.  An 
American  theatrical  audience  can  be  strangely 
slow  witted,  after  all. 


170  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

"  Little  Eyolf,"  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  the 
commentators  to  bury  it  beneath  a  mass  of 
silly  symbolism,  which  would,  if  accepted,  very 
justly  spoil  the  play  for  any  sensible,  level- 
headed person,  is  nothing  but  the  drama  of 
a  married  couple  who  do  not  know  how  to 
conduct  their  lives.  The  woman  is  full  — 
perhaps  too  full  for  a  normal  woman  —  of 
physical  passion,  and  she  loves  her  husband 
in  that  wise,  and  jealously.  The  husband  is 
a  rather  ineffectual  idealist,  not  a  passionate 
man  and  not  particularly  in  love  with  his 
wife.  He  has  married  her  half  under  the 
snare  of  her  beauty  and  half  to  gain  the  ease 
of  her  fortune.  He  has  an  introspective  con- 
science, too;  no  hero  of  Hawthorne's  ever  had 
more  of  it.  There  is  more  than  a  passing  simi- 
larity between  Hawthorne  and  Ibsen.  He 
must  "  dedicate  "  himself  to  some  cause,  and, 
revolting  from  the  hot,  close  passion  his  wife 
demands,  he  gives  himself  to  their  little  crip- 
pled son,  Eyolf.  Little  Eyolf  thus  separates 
husband  and  wife  rather  than  draws  them 
together,  which,  of  course,  is  contrary  to  all 
the  conventional  canons  of  fiction  and  drama, 
and  hence  very  "  baffling."  When  little  Eyolf 
follows  the  Rat-wife  and  is  drowned,  the  hus- 
band sees  "  retribution  "  in  it.  He  accuses  the 
wife.  She,  in  turn,  accuses  him.  "  Sorrow 
makes  them  wicked  and  hateful."     Gradually 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  171 

they  strip  their  souls  till  they  realize  that 
Eyolf  was,  in  truth,  a  "  little  stranger  child  " 
to  them;  he  existed  as  a  result  of  their  pas- 
sions, or  ministered  to  their  egotisms.  As 
Shaw  once  wrote,  the  pair  are  "  awakened  by 
the  blow  to  a  frightful  consciousness  of  them- 
selves, —  the  woman  as  a  mere  animal,  the 
man  as  a  moonstruck  nincompoop,  keeping  up 
appearances  as  a  suburban  lady  and  gentleman 
with  nothing  to  do  but  enjoy  themselves." 

What  is  the  outcome?  The  pair  are  landed 
proprietors.  They  realize  the  needs  of  the 
many  poor  little  children  on  their  estates.  In 
Rita  a  true  mother  instinct  at  last  awakes,  and 
in  Allmers  the  self-centred,  perverted  idealism 
which  made  him  a  type  of  the  unconscious 
egotist,  of  virtue  gone  wrong,  swings  off  its 
centre.  In  death  little  Eyolf  at  last  draws 
them  together  in  a  marriage  which  promises 
mutual  forbearance  and  service  to  society, 
which  is  based  on  comomn  sense  and  sanity, 
which,  chastened  by  grief  and  remorse,  comes 
out  of  the  hot,  close  boudoir  into  the  place 
where  unselfish  work  is  done  and  into 
"  the  great  silences "  of  spiritual  aspiration. 
"  Little  Eyolf "  is  not  a  perverted  nor  an 
extravagant  play;  it  is  full  of  profound 
human  significance.  And  its  outcome  is 
beautiful  with  hope  and  sweet  with  a  large 
sanitv.     It  is,  however,  written  in  a  style  so 


172  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

charged  with  secondary  meanings  and  so  un- 
sparingly stripped  of  all  the  usual  "  action  " 
of  the  theatre  that  it  baffles  many  people. 
And  it  requires  consummate  acting. 

Consummate  acting,  at  the  hands  of  Mme. 
Nazimova,  it  certainly  received.  The  present 
writer  was  not  fortunate  enough  to  have  seen 
Miss  Achurch  play  Rita  when  the  play  was 
first  done  in  English,  in  London.  But  it  is 
hard  to  conceive  the  part  more  effectively 
acted  than  by  Nazimova.  Certainly  it  has 
never  been  in  this  country.  It  was  perfectly 
easy  to  foresee  that  her  first  act  would  be  a 
triumph.  It  was  not  easy  to  foresee,  nor  even 
was  it  to  be  expected,  that  her  later  acts,  and 
especially  the  conclusion  of  the  play,  would  be 
informed  with  deep  feeling  and  a  beautiful, 
haunting  sincerity,  rising  at  the  close  to  a 
true  spiritual  nobility.  She  played  the  first 
act  in  a  key  of  suppressed  passion  and  sus- 
picious jealousy  which  in  less  skillful  hands 
might  easily  have  been  inhuman  and  contrib- 
uted to  make  Rita  rather  a  monster  than  a 
suffering  woman.  But  this  she  entirely 
avoided  by  the  singular  sincerity  of  certain 
underlying  tones  of  tenderness  in  her  voice 
and  womanly  devotion  in  her  manner.  The 
darting  jealousies  of  her  comments  on  All- 
mers's  attitude  toward  Eyolf  or  Asta  were 
Ijarbed  so  keenly  and  shot  so  swiftly  that  the 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  173 

audience  frequently  gasped  with  astonishment 
and  pleasure  at  the  sheer  technical  skill  of  her 
playing.  But  when  she  reached  the  famous 
"  There  stood  your  champagne,  but  you  tasted 
it  not,"  she  neither  blurted  it  out  nor  spoke  it 
with  vulgar  scorn.  She  crooned  it  sadly, 
with  smouldered  passion  of  wistful  reproach. 
The  love  it  represented  was  the  best  she 
knew,  physical  though  it  was,  and  to  her  it 
was  very  deep  and  sacred.  The  audience  was 
hushed.  Never,  surely,  was  this  speech  so 
robbed  of  every  suggestion  to  tickle  the  prudes 
or  the  Yahoos.  Yet  never  was  it  more  signi- 
ficant, more  charged  with  emotion,  more  illu- 
minative of  the  play  and  the  character.  Of 
course,  the  final  scene  of  act  one  she  carried 
triumphantly  to  a  thrilling  curtain.  The  hor- 
ror on  her  face  kept  the  audience  silent  a  full 
moment  after  the  curtain  fell. 

But  in  the  second  act  this  extraordinary 
woman,  this  "  tiger-cat  in  the  leash  of  art," 
was  no  less  tragically  sincere  in  her  remorse 
than  she  had  been  in  her  depiction  of  Rita's 
purring,  feline  physical  passions.  Words  are 
but  feeble  things  and  they  cannot  suggest  how 
vividly  she  brought  to  life  the  picture  that 
haunted  her  brain  of  the  great,  open  eyes  of 
little  Eyolf  staring  up  at  her  through  the  deep 
water,  nor  the  tragic  droop  of  her  mouth,  nor 
the  febrile,  bewildered  struggles  of  her  mind 


174  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

to  grope  a  way  out  of  the  labyrinth  of  woe,  nor 
the  subtle  upflarings  of  the  still  smouldering 
embers  of  jealousy.  In  the  last  act,  the  final 
awakening  of  the  woman  to  a  sane  and  just 
view  of  marriage  and  of  life  was  indicated  no 
less  clearly  and  sincerely.  It  is  in  scenes  of 
this  character,  as  in  the  last  act  of  "  A  Doll's 
House,"  that  Nazimova  has  seemed  most  defi- 
cient in  the  past.  Intellectual  and  spiritual 
suggestion  has  seemed  to  lie  beyond  her  range. 
Yet  here  she  caught  the  mood,  perhaps  because 
it  strikes  sharply  through  almost  like  a  sym- 
bol, and  is  represented  almost  pictorially. 
Standing  on  the  cliff  in  the  moonlight,  filled 
with  a  soft  joy  that  she  is  to  keep  her  husband 
as  well  as  the  joy  of  finding  a  work  in  the  world 
to  make  her  forget,  or  to  atone  for,  the  "  great, 
staring  eyes,"  she  slowly  lifted  her  face  and 
then  her  hands  to  the  heavens ;  and  the  curtain 
descended  on  her  deep,  sweet  voice  speaking 
the  one  word  of  thanks  and  on  a  picture  that 
expressed  to  the  eye  with  wonderful  clarity 
the  mood  of  the  conclusion.  It  was  beautifully 
planned  and  executed,  a  work  of  the  finest  and 
most  intelligent  imagination  and  suffused  with 
the  glamor  of  poetry. 

The  production,  scenically,  was  excellent, 
and  the  su])i)orting  company  fair.  Like  so 
many  of  Ibsen's  men,  Allmers  talks  a  great 
deal  and  worries  so  much  about  his  own  soul 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  175 

that  you  are  rather  vexed  at  him.  It  is  a  thank- 
less part.  Brandon  Tynan  could  not  redeem  it 
from  monotony,  nor  could  he  invest  it  with  the 
air  of  intellectuality  which  rightly  belongs  to  it, 
Allmers  being  a  scholar.  But  he  played  it  in- 
telligently, none  the  less,  with  considerable 
feeling  and  without  the  strut  and  rant  which 
might  have  been  expected  of  him.  Nazimova 
has  subdued  him  to  her  naturalistic  manner. 
Miss  Ida  Conquest  played  Asta,  quite  the  best 
performance  she  has  ever  given  in  New  York, 
clear  in  outline,  calm  and  sweet  and  tender,  yet 
with  the  requisite  passion  at  the  conclusion. 
The  weak  spot  in  the  cast  was  Miss  Gertrude 
Berkeley's  Rat-wife.  When  Mrs.  Campbell 
first  played  this  role,  she  made  the  Rat-wife  a 
celestial  messenger,  crooning  so  sweetly  to 
little  Eyolf  that  there  was  something  un- 
earthly about  it.  So  it  should  be  played.  The 
Rat-wife  has  a  certain  homely  realism,  to  be 
sure;  but  she  enters  the  play,  none  the  less, 
as  a  symbol  of  death;  she  represents  Ibsen's 
unconquerable  poetic  whimsey,  she  gives  to 
the  drama  that  touch  of  unreality  which  makes 
so  much  of  his  work  vastly  different  from  the 
stark  realism  of  the  school.  To  play  the  Rat- 
wife  merely  as  the  "  character  old  woman  "  of 
the  conventional  drama  is  to  miss  utterly  the 
true  effect. 


V 


176  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

"HER   HUSBAND'S   WIFE" 

Garrick,  May  9,  19 10 

Henry  Miller,  acting  himself  in  a  compara- 
tively minor  part,  appeared  in  an  unusual  farce 
at  the  fag  end  of  the  season  —  "  Her  Hus- 
band's Wife,"  by  A.  E.  Thomas,  until  recently 
a  newspaper  reporter.  The  farce  is  unusual,  as 
farces  go  with  the  rank  and  file  of  our  drama- 
tists, because  it  is  built  upon  an  idea  which  is 
capable  of  something  more  than  mechanical 
development,  which  has  a  true  comedy  ring, 
indeed ;  and  because  it  is  written  with  a  grace, 
smartness  and  wit  usually  associated  with  the 
higher  ranges  of  the  drama,  and  is  in  most  re- 
spects acted  accordingly.  It  is  often  but  a  step 
from  the  farce  of  "  iler  Husband's  Wife  "  to 
the  genuine  comedy  of  satire  or  of  character. 
Much  of  the  interest  lies  less  in  the  tangle  of 
incident  than  in  the  mental  perplexities  and 
vacillations  of  the  heroine.  The  affectionate 
fun  the  author  has  with  that  little,  foolish,  alto- 
gether adorable  person  is  manifestly  what  in- 
terests him  most  and  consequently  what  inter- 
ests his  audience  most.  And  this  is  the  stuff  of 
comedy.  Gilbert  once  said  that  it  was  doubt- 
less funny  to  sit  down  in  a  pork  pie,  but  a  man 
didn't  have  to  sit  down  in  a  pork  pie  to  be 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  17T 

funny.     "  Her  Husband's  Wife  "  follows  this 
excellent  principle. 

The  play  is  all  about  Irene  Randolph  and  her 
hypochondriacal  plot  to  get  a  second  wife  for 
her  husband.  Irene  is  sure  she  is  going  to  die. 
Both  her  parents  died  young.  They  were 
drowned  —  which  shows  that  hers  is  not  a 
long-lived  family.  She  takes  pills  and  pow- 
ders; she  does  not  know  what  for;  nobody 
knows  what  for ;  the  doctors  have  all  failed  to 
find  anything  the  matter  with  her.  But  she 
feels  she  should  make  an  effort  to  live,  so  down 
go  the  unknown  pills  and  powders.  It  is  her 
wish  to  pick  out  a  second  wife  for  her  poor 
Stuart  —  a  wife  who  will  do  all  for  him  that 
she  has  done  without  in  the  least  being  to  him 
what  she  has  been.  In  short,  she  picks  out  a 
very  dowdy  and  plain  woman.  But  Emily 
Ladew,  the  woman  selected,  is  dowdy  and  plain 
because  her  love  affair  has  been  broken  off  and 
she  does  n't  care  how  she  looks.  This  offer 
to  be,  as  she  puts  it,  "  a  trained  nurse,"  insults 
her  feminine  pride.  She  agrees  to  marry 
Stuart,  but  inwardly  she  resolves  to  make  Irene 
suffer  for  the  insult.  This  she  successfully 
does  by  appearing  in  act  two  in  radiant  gar- 
ments and  a  picture  hat  and  making  up  to 
Stuart  under  the  eyes  of  his  wife  like  any  hen- 
pheasant  to  a  chanticleer.  Of  course  Stuart 
knows  nothing  of  what  is  going  on,  nor  does 


178  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Irene's  brother,  who  was  the  lover  with  whom 
Emily  had  quarreled.  The  complications 
which  ensue  are  extremely  amusing,  and  con- 
structed according  to  the  recognized  canons  of 
farce,  resolving  themselves  finally,  of  course, 
in  explanations  and  reconciliations  all  around. 

Meanwhile  the  little  wife,  Irene,  enmeshed 
in  the  web  of  her  own  plot,  torn  with  conflicting 
emotions  of  jealous  rage,  self-reproach,  and 
hypochondriacal  devotion  to  her  determination 
that  she  is  going  to  die,  is  quite  as  amusing  as 
the  intricacies  and  confusions  of  the  plot.  She 
is,  if  you  like,  an  impossible  figure,  a  fantastic 
burlesque  of  certain  feminine  traits;  but  she 
is  oddly  human,  none  the  less,  and  quite  irre- 
sistibly alluring.  You  watch  her  moods  with 
delighted  sympathy  and  when,  at  the  end,  she 
orders  all  her  medicine  to  be  thrown  away  and 
settles  down  to  the  happy  task  of  continuing  as 
her  husband's  first  wife,  there  is  a  quaint, 
sneaking  little  emotion  of  gladness  in  your 
heart,  quite  unlike  the  sentiments  inspired  by 
the  usual  personages  in  the  usual  farce.  Gayly 
fantastic  and  even  satiric  as  the  whole  piece  is, 
including  this  character  of  Irene,  there  is  about 
her  the  vital  quality  of  life,  that  little  flavor  of 
humanity  which  belongs  to  true  comedy.  In 
the  quiet,  pretty  ending  which  he  has  devised 
for  the  piece,  Mr.  Miller  has  recognized  this 
quality  and  let  the  play   speak  at   the  close 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  179 

sweetly,  delicately,  with  the  warm,  sly  humor 
that  lurks  in  Mr.  Thomas's  writing  at  its  best. 
The  part  of  Irene  could  not  have  been  more 
happily  played  than  it  was  by  Miss  Laura  Hope 
Crews.  Her  Polly  in  "  The  Great  Divide  "  is 
pleasantly  remembered.  But  here  she  has 
ampler  opportunity  and  she  proves  that  she 
possesses  more  than  a  quaint,  humorous  and 
insinuatingly  feminine  personality.  She  uses 
a  wide  range  of  technical  resource  and  displays 
the  ability  to  compose  a  character  and  keep  un- 
erringly within  it,  and  a  quick,  apt,  and  deli- 
cately pointed  comic  sense.  Moreover,  she 
plays  with  apparently  complete  unconscious- 
ness of  her  audience  and  thus  adds  a  charm  of 
lifelikeness  to  the  fun  of  farce.  She  was 
warmly  acclaimed  on  the  opening  night,  and  has 
taken  her  place  in  the  front  rank  of  our  younger 
actresses.  Like  Frank  Worthing,  she  plays 
with  a  double  edge.  When  her  jealousy  had 
finally  mastered  her  desire  to  find  a  second  wife 
for  Stuart  and  she  sought  to  discourage  the  other 
woman  out  of  the  bargain  by  describing  to  her, 
over  the  tea  cups,  Stuart's  "  terrible  brutali- 
ties," Miss  Crews  put  lemon  in  Emily's  tea 
as  if  it  were  sugar,  and  sugar  as  if  it  were 
lemon,  with  indescribable  honeyed  spite,  while 
she  told  her  barefaced  lies  with  such  a  plead- 
ing solemnity  that  the  audience  answered  with 
delight.    When  her  lies  had  quite  overwhelmed 


180  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

her,  she  fled  tearfully  from  her  uncle's  bosom 
to  her  brother's  almost  as  David  Copperfield's 
Dora  might  have  done,  v^rith  delicious  little 
plaintive  whines.  Before  her  husband,  a  note 
of  tenderness  and  tears  was  sincerely  sounded. 
And  when  she  hissed,  apropos  of  Emily's  ar- 
rival in  a  trap  with  Stuart  from  the  railroad 
station,  "  she  happened  to  be  driving  by!  "  the 
emphasis  on  "  happened  "  was  a  work  of  art. 
Miss  Crews  has  here  raised  a  whimsical  char- 
acter in  a  farce  into  the  realms  of  comedy  and 
endowed  it  with  a  bewitching  personality,  un- 
erring naturalness,  and  picturesque  variety. 

The  author  himself  is  more  interested  in 
Irene  than  in  his  other  characters,  much  more 
interested  than  he  is  in  the  character  of  the 
wise,  shrewd,  kindly  old  uncle,  sharer  of  every- 
body's confidences,  played  by  Mr.  Miller.  This 
part  could,  in  no  hands,  escape  a  certain  monot- 
ony and  a  secondary  interest.  It  is  not  a  part 
for  a  star,  and  Mr.  Miller,  in  playing  it,  was 
very  evidently  thinking  more  of  the  success  of 
the  play  as  a  whole  than  of  any  personal  glory. 
He  needed  to  do  little  but  "  jolly  along  "  the  peo- 
ple of  the  play,  laugh  behind  his  hand  at  their 
comic  perplexities,  and  make  brief  love  now  and 
then  himself  to  a  widow,  the  object  of  a  boyhood 
devotion,  who  seems  to  have  been  introduced 
in  the  plot  for  no  other  reason.  Such  a  part, 
of  course,  makes  but  slight  call  upon  Mr.  Mil- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  181 

ler's  resources,  and  perhaps  he  labors  a  trifle 
too  hard  to  make  it  stand  out.  The  play  would 
have  more  artistic  unity  if  the  part  had  fallen 
to  a  less  dominant  actor,  since  the  author,  in 
adapting  it  for  Mr.  Miller,  has  been  unable  to 
build  it  up  and  fuse  it  successfully  into  the  more 
important  matters  of  his  story.  He  has  tried 
to  write  what  is  called  a  "  Wyndham  part,"  but 
he  has  not  succeeded  as  the  author  of  "  The 
Mollusc  "  succeeded.  The  character  is  too  much 
an  outsider  in  the  tale.  Mr.  Miller,  however, 
has  shrewdly  cast  the  other  parts,  and  through- 
out the  guiding  hand  of  his  expert  stage  man- 
agement is  apparent  —  in  the  quiet  speed  of  the 
piece,  the  absence  of  noise  and  meaningless 
runnings  about  and  cheap  horse-play;  in  the 
clean-cut  enunciation  of  the  players;  in  the 
pervasive  spirit  of  good  breeding,  genial  hu- 
mor, wit,  and  humanity.  Mr.  Thomas  has  been 
fortunate  in  making  his  bow  as  a  playwright 
with  the  aid  of  an  actor-manager  so  capable  of 
understanding  his  whimsical  and  often  delicate 
fun  and  of  reproducing  it  on  the  stage.  Mr. 
Thomas  will  surely  be  heard  from  again,  and 
often,  in  our  theatre,  and  it  is  pleasant  and 
profitable  to  chronicle  at  some  length  his  ini- 
tial success. 


182  AT    THE    NEW,    THEATRE 

THE   BAD    MORALS    OF    GOOD 
PLAYS 

"The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back" 
"The  Man  From  Home" 
"The  Fighting  Hope" 
"The  Whirlwind" 

In  life  there  are  two  kinds  of  morals,  yours 
and  mine.  In  the  drama  there  is  a  third  kind, 
which  has  no  relation  to  life  whatever.  We 
are  often  asked  in  the  playhouse  to  accept  as 
admirable,  as  moral,  what  is  in  reality  con- 
temptible, immoral ;  and,  what  is  worse,  we  do 
so  accept  it.  We  check  our  own  moral  code  in 
the  cloak  room  before  the  play  begins,  and  then 
are  thrilled  with  pleasure  by  the  most  flag- 
rantly immoral  proceedings  masquerading  as 
virtue  on  the  stage,  or  are  warmed  to  a  rich 
glow  of  sympathetic  sanctity  by  situations 
which,  upon  analysis,  are  the  negation  of  good- 
ness. And  this  is  entirely  due  to  the  fact  that 
in  the  theatre  we  are  carried  along  from  mo- 
ment to  moment,  without  pausing  to  reflect 
u\)on  cause  or  effect;  and  the  dramatist  is  so 
carried  along,  also,  in  his  desire  to  make  each 
situation  immediately  effective,  forgetting  its 
larger  significance.  In  other  words,  in  the 
drama  as  elsewhere,  a  lack  of  clear  thinking 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  183 

down  to  the  bed  rock  of  principles  is  the  cause 
of  most  of  the  falsity  and  misappreciation. 

A  play  which  enjoyed  enormous  vogue  in 
New  York  during  the  winter  of  1909-10  was 
"  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back,"  by 
Jerome  K.  Jerome,  beautifully  acted  by  that  fine 
English  artist,  Mr.  Forbes-Robertson,  and  ac- 
claimed by  nearly  everyone  as  a  drama  of  great 
moral  import  and  spiritual  regeneration.  Mr. 
Forbes-Robertson  enacted  the  part  of  a  benign 
stranger,  presumably  an  incarnation  of  the 
Christ-spirit,  who  came  to  a  boarding-house 
filled  with  lying,  scolding,  bickering,  cheating, 
unhappy  beings,  and  by  "  calling  to  their  better 
natures  "  reformed  them  one  and  all.  They 
went  down  before  the  glance  of  his  eye  and  the 
soft  boom  of  his  voice  like  nine-pins  in  an  alley. 
And,  as  each  sinner  went  down,  as  each  ref- 
ormation was  accomplished,  all  the  women  in 
the  audience  wept.  After  each  act  strong  New 
York  men  were  so  affected  that  they  actually 
said  "  Excuse  me,"  when  they  climbed  over 
ladies'  knees  to  get  to  the  aisles. 

Now,  accepting  this  play  as  allegorical,  it 
has  great  merits  beyond  its  immediate  theatri- 
cal effectiveness.  It  typifies  with  much  beauty 
the  regenerative  forces  of  the  Christ-spirit  in 
man.  But  to  accept  it  solely  as  an  allegory  is 
well  nigh  impossible,  since  all  its  characters, 
save  the  mysterious  Passer-by,  are  drawn  in 


184  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

the  key  of  realism  and  are  unconsciously  ac- 
cepted by  an  audience  as  actual  men  and  wo- 
men, so  that  their  regeneration  seems  to  repre- 
sent an  actual  process.  What,  in  actual  life, 
would  be  the  process  of  reclaiming  them?  It 
would  be  a  battle,  a  long-drawn  battle.  Un- 
fortunately, men  in  this  world  are  not  turned 
from  sinners  to  saints  without  a  struggle,  and 
usually  a  bitter  struggle.  They  must  confess, 
they  must  repent ;  but  that  is  not  enough.  They 
must  be  led  up  from  one  stage  of  understand- 
ing to  another,  slowly,  patiently,  probably  with 
frequent  backslidings.  In  this  world  you  can 
no  more  expect  to  make  a  thief  realize  in  one 
day  the  moral  beauty  of  honesty,  nor  a  scold 
to  lose  in  a  warm  glow  of  geniality  all  impulse 
to  wrangle,  than  you  can  expect  to  turn  dark- 
ness into  light.  But  in  "  The  Passing  of  The 
Third  Floor  Back  "  all  the  reforms  are  brought 
about  without  a  struggle,  simply  by  an  hyp- 
notic glance  of  the  eye  and  the  seed  of  a  sweet 
suggestion. 

To  those  men  —  and  with  one  such  I  sat  in 
the  theatre  —  who  have  labored  toil  fully  to 
raise  their  fallen  brothers  and  sisters,  this  play 
is  almost  as  much  a  travesty  as  an  allegory.  It 
is  a  travesty,  because  in  common  with  so  much 
of  the  easy  optimism  of  the  day  —  the  New 
Thought,  or  New  Psychology,  or  new  Law  of 
Suggestion,  or  whatever  it  is  called  —  it  ig- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  185 

nores  the  practical  basis  of  human  struggle 
and  human  will  in  every  true  and  lasting  ref- 
ormation, and  sends  away  the  beholder  with 
a  pleasant  feeling  that  all  that  is  needed  to  set 
the  world  aright  are  a  few  sweet  thoughts  and 
a  call  to  "  our  better  natures."  Ah,  you  may 
call  and  call  in  this  life,  but  it  will  do  you  little 
good!  You  must  yourself  go  down  to  the 
stricken  soul,  and  fight  with  him,  and  brace  his 
will,  and  teach  him  like  a  little  child,  and  at 
times  be  harsh  with  him,  and  give  him  a  bath, 
and  find  him  a  job,  and  then,  perhaps,  after 
six  months  or  a  year  or  two  yeai^  or  three, 
you  may  have  made  a  man  of  him.  Ulti- 
mately, there  is  something  dangerously  im- 
moral about  "  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor 
Back  "  —  immoral  because  it  makes  spiritual 
regeneration  a  matter  of  external  and  imme- 
diate suggestion,  a  kind  of  hypnotic  process, 
instead  of  an  inward  education  of  the  will  and 
the  moral  senses;  dangerous  because  it  per- 
mits an  audience  to  go  away  amiably  self-satis- 
fied, to  lapse  back  fifteen  minutes  later  into 
exactly  their  former  state.  In  spite  of  its  alle- 
gorical beauty,  it  inspires  no  real  ethical  pur- 
pose and  no  real  thought,  because  it  is  based 
by  the  dramatist  on  no  real  thought,  though 
doubtless  his  purpose  was  sincere  enough.  It 
does  not  touch  the  real  principles  of  moral 
reformation. 


186  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Another  play  which  for  two  seasons  has  en- 
joyed enormous  popularity,  "The  Man  from 
Home,"  illustrates  a  different  phase  of  the  curi- 
ous morals  of  the  drama.  Perhaps  it  may  seem 
that  this  Tarkington-Wilson  comedy  offends 
rather  against  good  taste  and  good  sense  than 
morals.  But  ultimately  what  we  acclaim  it 
most  warmly  for  is  its  glorification  of  the 
sturdy  virtue  and  democratic  simplicity  of 
Kokomo,  Indiana,  as  against  the  rottenness 
and  snobbery  of  effete  Europe.  And,  of  course, 
thoughtfully  considered,  it  actually  renders 
these  estimable  virtues  ridiculous  and  mean 
by  ignoring  or  falsifying  all  the  rest  of  the 
picture.  In  the  playhouse,  having  checked 
everything  but  our  jingo  patriotism  in  the 
cloak  room,  we  madly  applaud  Daniel  Voor- 
hees  Pike,  of  Kokomo.  What  he  would  be, 
under  actual  conditions,  is  a  rather  uncouth 
boor,  making  a  fool  of  himself  and  America. 

If  the  authors  of  this  play  had  held  up  Daniel 
Voorhees  Pike  as  a  type  to  be  studied  that 
would  be  another  matter.  But  they  have  ob- 
viously held  him  up  as  a  hero  to  be  admired. 
Now,  rudeness,  ignorance,  narrow-minded- 
ness, are  never  admirable.  And  the  man  who 
thinks,  acts  and  speaks  at  any  and  all  times  on 
the  assumption  that  the  town  hall  of  Kokomo 
is  more  beautiful  because  it  is  in  Kokomo, 
which  is  in  Indiana,  which  is  in  the  United 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  187 

States  of  America,  than  St.  Peter's  in  Rome, 
or  the  AcropoHs  at  Athens,  or  the  Doges'  Pal- 
ace in  Venice,  is  no  whit  less  a  snob  than  the 
European  aristocrat  who  thinks  that  his  fif- 
teen generations  of  fine-mannered  ancestors 
make  him  the  superior  of  Daniel.  In  fact,  the 
impartial  observer,  who  managed  to  slip  past 
the  cloak  room,  has  a  certain  sympathy  with  the 
aristocrat.  Possibly  this  observer  has  been 
both  in  Kokomo  and  Sorrento  —  where  the 
scene  of  the  play  is  laid.  Somehow,  the  sweep 
of  that  blue  Bay  and  the  eternal  mystery  of 
Italy  call  him  still,  though  he  can  remain  absent 
from  Kokomo  without  a  regret. 

Matthew  Arnold,  in  his  lecture  on  Emerson, 
pointed  out  as  some  of  America's  dangers  "  the 
absence  of  the  discipline  of  respect ;  .  .  .  hard- 
ness and  materialism ;  exaggeration  and  boast- 
fulness;  ...  a  false  smartness,  a  false  audac- 
ity, a  want  of  soul  and  delicacy."  And  of 
Emerson  he  said,  "  To  us  he  shows  for  guid- 
ance his  lucid  freedom,  his  cheerfulness  and 
hope;  to  you  his  dignity,  delicacy,  serenity, 
elevation," 

Daniel  Voorhees  Pike  was  certainly  not  dis- 
ciplined in  respect;  and  did  he  not  possess  just 
these  dangerous  qualities  of  false  smartness, 
false  audacity,  exaggeration  and  boastfulness  ? 
Certainly  he  did  not  possess  dignity,  delicacy, 
serenity,  elevation.    They  are  moral  attributes, 


188  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

and  just  so  far  as  he  is  held  up  as  a  hero  with- 
out them  he  is  lacking  in  moral  worth  and 
soundness;  and  the  play  is  lacking  in  moral 
worth  and  soundness,  were  it  not  still  further 
made  immoral  by  its  falsification  of  European 
society,  its  abandoned  disregard  of  anything 
good  in  the  Old  World,  to  make  an  Indianian 
holiday.  "  The  Man  from  Home  "  is  not  based 
on  justice,  but  jingoism.  It  is  not  thought  out 
to  first  principles.  It  responds  to  an  emotional 
test,  but  not  to  an  intellectual. 

Of  course,  the  most  flagrant  cases  of  immor- 
ality parading  as  virtue  are  to  be  found,  not 
in  plays  like  these,  which  have  none  the  less  de- 
cided literary  or  human  merit,  but  in  plays  of 
a  more  melodramatic  order,  where  the  author 
was  in  reality  working  to  pile  up  situations  and 
which  we,  by  a  total  suppression  of  our  in- 
telligences, have  come  somehow  to  accept  as 
enjoyable,  even  emotionally  stirring.  Such 
plays  make  little  claim  on  serious  attention,  and 
it  would  not  be  worth  while  to  consider  them 
here  were  it  not  for  this  very  fact  that  we  do 
yield  to  their  spell  in  the  theatre  and  submit  to 
seeing  some  of  our  best  actresses  portray  their 
heroines.  For  the  quaint  or  bloody  morals  of 
an  elder  day,  our  historic  sense  very  properly 
makes  allowances,  and  we  do  not  hold  Eliza- 
bethan drama  up  to  the  code  of  the  Twentieth 
Century.    The  trouble  is,  we  do  not  hold  much 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  189 

of  the  Twentieth  Century  drama  up  to  the  code 
of  the  Twentieth  Century.  We  make  an  as- 
sumption that  the  plays  of  mechanical  sus- 
pense, of  melodramatic  appeal,  are  excused 
from  living  up  to  the  moral  law.  But  every 
time  we  do  this,  every  time  we  give  emotional 
response  to  the  weeping  heroine  of  an  ethically 
false  and  illogical  melodrama,  we  weaken  our 
perception  of  fundamental  truth  in  the  play- 
house, we  unconsciously  debase  our  standards 
for  more  serious  drama.  There  is  no  reason 
whatever  why  even  a  melodrama  cannot  be 
ethically  sound  and  logical.  There  is  every 
reason  why  we  should  insist  upon  its  being  so. 
Sloppy,  sentimental  thinking  is  dangerous 
wherever  it  occurs,  even  in  the  playhouses 
of  Mr.  Belasco. 

One  of  the  best  (or  the  worst)  examples  of 
false  ethics  in  such  a  play  is  furnished  by  "  The 
Fighting  Hope,"  produced  by  Mr.  Belasco  in 
the  Autumn  of  1908,  and  acted  by  Miss  Blanche 
Bates.  In  this  play  a  man.  Granger,  has  been 
jailed,  his  wife  and  the  world  believe  for  an- 
other man's  crime.  The  other  man.  Burton 
Temple,  is  president  of  the  bank  Granger  has 
been  convicted  of  robbing.  A  district  attor- 
ney, hot  after  the  men  higher  up,  is  about  to 
reopen  the  case.  It  begins  to  look  bad  for 
Temple.  Mrs.  Granger,  disguised  as  a  stenog- 
rapher, goes  to  his  house  to  secure  evidence 


190  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

against  him.  What  she  secures  is  a  letter 
proving  that  not  he,  but  her  husband,  was  after 
all  the  criminal. 

Of  course  this  letter  is  a  knockout  blow  for 
her.  She  realizes  that  "  the  father  of  her  boys  " 
is  a  thief,  that  the  man  she  would  send  to  jail 
(and  with  whom  you  know  the  dramatist  is 
going  to  make  her  finally  fall  in  love)  is  inno- 
cent. Still,  in  her  first  shock,  her  instinct  to 
protect  "  the  father  of  her  boys  "  persists,  and 
she  burns  the  letter. 

So  far,  so  good,  but  Mrs.  Granger  is  repre- 
sented as  a  woman  of  fine  instincts  and  charac- 
ter. That  she  should  persist  in  cooler  blood  in 
her  false  and  immoral  supposition  that  her 
boys'  name  will  be  protected  or  their  happiness 
preserved  —  to  say  nothing  of  her  own  —  by 
the  guilt  of  two  parents  instead  of  one,  is  hard 
to  believe.  Yet  that  is  exactly  what  the  play 
asks  you  to  believe,  and  it  asks  you  to  assume 
that  here  is  a  true  dilemma.  A  babbling  old 
housekeeper,  whose  chief  use  in  the  house 
seems  to  be  to  help  the  plot  along,  after  the 
manner  of  stage  servants,  tells  Mrs.  Granger 
that  she  must  not  atone  for  her  act  by  giving 
honest  testimony  in  court,  that  of  course  she 
must  let  an  innocent  man  go  to  jail,  to  "  save 
her  boys'  good  name." 

It  would  be  much  more  sensible  should  Mrs. 
Granger  here  strike  the  immoral  old  lady,  in- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  191 

stead  of  saving  her  blows  for  her  cur  of  a  hus- 
band, in  the  last  act,  who,  after  all,  was  "  the 
father  of  her  boys."  But  she  listens  to  her. 
She  appears  actually  in  doubt  not  only  as  to 
which  course  she  will  pursue,  but  which  she 
should  pursue.  She  is  intended  by  the  drama- 
tist as  a  pitiable  object  because  on  the  one  hand 
she  feels  it  right  to  save  an  innocent  man 
(whom  she  has  begun  to  love),  and  on  the  other 
feels  it  her  duty  to  save  her  sons'  happiness  by 
building  their  future  on  a  structure  of  lies  and 
deceit.  And  she  reaches  a  solution,  not  by 
reasoning  the  tangle  out,  not  by  any  real 
thought  for  her  boys,  their  genuine  moral  wel- 
fare, not  by  any  attention  to  principles,  but 
simply  by  discovering  that  her  husband  has 
been  sexually  unfaithful  to  her.  Further,  he 
becomes  a  cad  and  charges  her  with  infidelity. 
Then  she  springs  upon  him  and  beats  him 
with  her  fists,  which  is  not  the  most  effective 
way  of  convincing  an  audience  that  she  was 
a  woman  capable  of  being  torn  by  moral 
problems. 

Of  course,  as  the  play  is  written,  there  is  no 
moral  problem.  The  morality  is  all  of  the 
theatre.  It  belongs  to  that  strange  world  be- 
hind the  proscenium,  wherein  we  gaze,  and  gaz- 
ing sometimes  utter  chatter  about  "  strong  situ- 
ations," "  stirring  climaxes,"  and  the  like,  as 
people  hypnotized.    There  might  have  been  a 


192  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

moral  problem  if  Airs.  Granger,  before  she  dis- 
covered her  husband's  guilt,  had  been  forced 
to  fight  a  rising  tide  of  passion  for  Temple  in 
her  own  heart.  There  might  have  been  a  moral 
problem  after  the  discovery  and  her  first  hasty, 
but  natural,  destruction  of  the  letter,  if  she 
had  felt  that  her  desire  to  save  Temple  was 
prompted  by  a  passion  still  illicit,  rather  than 
by  justice.  But  no  such  real  problems  were 
presented.  The  lady  babbles  eternally  of  ''  sav- 
ing her  boys'  good  name,"  while  you  are  sup- 
posed to  weep  for  her  plight.  Unless  you  have 
checked  your  sense  of  reality  in  the  cloak  room, 
you  scorn  her  perceptions  and  despise  her 
standards.  How  much  finer  had  she  continued 
to  love  her  husband!  But  he,  after  all,  was 
only  "  the  father  of  her  boys." 

And  yet  this  play,  wath  Mr.  Belasco's  stamp 
upon  it,  went  the  rounds  of  the  theatres  for 
two  whole  years  and  gave  evident  pleasure  to 
thousands  of  people,  many  of  whom  would 
doubtless  be  sorely  perplexed  at  Ibsen's  "  Pil- 
lars of  Society,"  which  depicts  the  misery  of  a 
life  based  on  lies  and  deceit,  which  is  truly 
moral.  In  actual  life,  these  thousands  of 
people  are  probal)ly  honest  and  upright  and 
would  cut  ofT  their  right  hands  before  sending 
an  honest  man  to  jail  or  raising  their  chil- 
dren on  lies.  But  they  do  not  carry  their 
principles    into    the    playhouse.      Once    there, 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  193 

they  do  not  look  behind  the  momentary  situa- 
tion. They  are  moved  by  falsity  as  readily 
as  by  truth. 

There  was  produced  in  Chicago  in  March, 
1910,  a  play  by  Jules  Goodman,  called 
"  Mother,"  one  of  those  plays  technically  de- 
scribed as  possessing  "  heart  interest."  A 
mother  is  shown  making  all  possible  sacrifices 
for  her  erring  offspring,  who  lie,  forge,  and 
insult  her.  But  Mother  shoulders  all  trials  and 
all  blame,  even  for  the  forgery.  You  are  ob- 
viously expected  to  admire  as  well  as  to  pity 
her,  to  regard  her  as  a  noble  embodiment  of 
''  mother  love."  Actually,  the  speech  and  con- 
duct of  her  children  show  that  she  was  but  ill 
fitted  for  the  duties  of  motherhood,  and  in  so 
far  quite  the  opposite  of  admirable.  Here  is  a 
play  of  the  type  known  as  "  wholesome,"  and 
intended  to  impart  a  great  moral  uplift.  Actu- 
ally, while  it  makes  susceptible  female  auditors 
weep  and  have  a  perfectly  lovely  time,  it  is 
based  on  immorality,  on  that  terrible  and  often 
innocent  immorality  of  incompetent  parent- 
hood. Had  the  author  sincerely  thought  out 
the  meaning  of  his  play,  had  he  reasoned  down 
to  first  principles,  he  would  have  made  this 
mother's  acts  not  those  of  moral  heroism  but 
of  belated  atonement. 

Then,  of  course,  his  play  would  not  have 
been    so    immediately    and    widely    popular! 


194  AT    THE    NEW,    THEATRE 

Thought  is  seldom  immediately  and  widely 
popular  in  the  theatre. 

A  classic  case  of  the  strange  morality  in  the 
play  of  theatric  suspense  (called  *'  the  well- 
made  play  "  because  it  is  often  made  so  badly) 
is  furnished  by  Sardou's  "  Fedora."  As  G.  B. 
Shaw  once  pointed  out,  the  hero  is  suspected  by 
the  heroine  of  having  been  a  Nihilist,  at  a  time 
when  to  be  a  Nihilist  in  Russia  was  to  be  a  hero 
in  most  other  countries  —  if  it  is  not  so  still. 
She  repudiates  him,  but  he  regains  completely 
her  confidence  by  proving  that  he  is  no  Nihilist, 
but  simply  a  common  murderer,  who  killed  his 
man  out  of  jealousy! 

It  is  not  needful  to  go  back  to  Sardovi  for 
such  examples,  however.  At  Daly's  Theatre, 
New  York,  in  the  Spring  of  19 lo,  Bernstein's 
drama,  "  The  Whirlwind,"  was  presented  in 
English,  and  we  were  edified  by  the  spectacle 
of  as  strange  a  collection  of  stage  morals  as 
ever  went  to  the  making  of  "  emotional  situa- 
tions." One  man  announces  to  another  that  he 
is  going  to  shoot  himself.  The  second  man, 
who  has  suggested  to  the  first  that  he  go  to 
America  since  his  presence  in  France  com- 
promises the  second  man's  daughter,  interposes 
only  a  momentary  objection.  What  if  he  should 
prevent?  That  would  spoil  the  climax!  So, 
very  gravely,  solemnly,  as  befits  one  taking  his 
last  look  upon  those  about  to  die,  this  second 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  195 

man  gathers  up  his  hat  and  stick,  makes  a 
grave,  solemn  bow,  and  passes  out  of  the  room. 
One  of  the  most  popular  dramatists  in  France 
solemnly  wrote  this  scene  without  a  hint  that 
he  did  not  regard  it  as  entirely  credible  and 
human.  An  American  stage  manager  sol- 
emnly staged  it,  as  entirely  credible  and  human, 
in  a  Broadway  theatre  in  1910.  And,  as  en- 
tirely credible  and  human,  American  audiences 
sat  breathlessly  and  watched  it.  But  such 
stage  morality  as  this,  of  course,  becomes  too 
preposterous  to  deceive  anybody  very  long. 
Most  of  the  plays  of  Bernstein  are  a  passing 
fad,  startling  us  into  momentary  attention  by 
their  sensationalism,  like  a  yellow  journal  by 
its  lurid  headlines.  Ultimately,  we  get  back 
a  portion  of  our  intelligences  from  the  coat 
room. 

Two  or  three  years  ago  Arnold  Daly  pro- 
duced a  play  called  "  The  Regeneration."  The 
hero  was  a  Bowery  thug,  partly  from  natural 
instinct  but  much  more  from  environment. 
But  he  was  a  commendable  moral  crook.  He 
was  **  on  the  level  "  with  his  pals,  observed  the 
thieves'  code  of  honor,  was  true  to  his  "  wo- 
man." But  he  became  regenerated.  He  went 
to  a  settlement  and  "  got  religion,"  thanks  to 
a  pretty  petticoat  worker  from  upper  Fifth 
Avenue.  As  soon  as  this  moral  regenera- 
tion  was   accomplished,   he   shoved   back  his 


196  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

**  woman  "  into  the  gutter,  he  was  false  to 
his  old  pals,  he  violated  every  one  of  the  de- 
cent, honorable  instincts  which  had  hitherto 
kept  him  human.  And  you  were  supposed  to 
applaud.     Such  is  morality  on  the  stage! 

And  such  is  morality  on  the  stage  because  it 
is  vastly  easier  in  the  drama  to  write  what  is 
momentarily  effective  than  what  is  funda- 
mentally true.  Here,  or  in  any  play  of  similar 
type,  it  is  easy  and  picturesque  to  cause  your 
hero  suddenly  to  rise  from  prayer  regenerate 
and  spurn  in  ringing  words  his  past  life.  It  is 
easy  for  the  author  of  "  The  Passing  of  the 
Third  Floor  Back "  to  show  his  mysterious 
Passer-by  looking  into  the  eyes  of  the  Painted 
Lady,  and  then  to  show  her,  in  the  next  act, 
with  the  paint  washed  off.  It  is  easy  to 
show  a  frail  little  mother  shouldering  the 
crimes  of  her  boys,  and  doubly  easy  to  make 
your  audience  gxish  tears  at  the  sight.  If 
the  ethical  problems  of  life  were  only  so  simple 
as  that!  But  they  are  not.  They  are  bitterly 
complex;  they  stem  back  into  the  past  and 
forward  into  the  future;  and  to  picture  them 
truly  in  drama  requires  not  only  technique, 
but  hard,  diligent,  unsparing  thought.  The 
drama  which  is  written  without  thought  is 
writ  in  water. 

It  requires  technique,  obviously,  because  the 
dramatist  has  no  means  of  explanation  but  the 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  197 

months  and  visible  deeds  of  his  characters,  and 
to  make  the  momentary  situation,  the  passing 
speech,  not  only  tell  as  life-like  action  but  also 
as  exposition  of  what  has  gone  before  or  is  to 
follow  after,  is  the  hardest  task  which  con- 
fronts the  craftsman  in  any  art  whatsoever.  It 
requires  hard,  patient  thought,  because  no 
moral  problem  in  this  world,  no  question  of 
conduct,  is  easy  of  solution.  If  the  dramatist 
regards  his  stage  people  and  his  stage  situa- 
tions as  representative  of  life,  he  must  judge 
conduct,  weigh  motives  and  arrange  the  out- 
come of  deeds  with  all  the  care  he  would  bestow 
upon  human  beings  in  like  predicament.  With- 
out such  thought  he  may  concoct  a  play  tempo- 
rarily successful  in  the  theatre,  but  he  cannot 
write  a  play  which  wnll  bring  him  enduring 
fame,  because  it  will  lack  the  firm  foundation 
of  sound  moral  principle.  In  the  long  run  you 
can  no  more  successfully  defy  moral  principle 
in  the  drama  than  in  the  world. 

Two  recent  American  plays  written  with 
honest,  painstaking  search  for  what  their  au- 
thors conceived  as  the  real  moral  issues  are 
Eugene  Walter's  drama  of  the  poor  little 
chorus  girl,  "  The  Easiest  Way,"  and  William 
Vaughan  Moody's  drama  of  spiritual  pragma- 
tism, "  The  Great  Divide."  How  high  these 
plays  outtop  the  bulk  of  contemporary  Ameri- 
can drama,  even  in  popular  estimation,  is  due 


198  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

not  alone  to  their  theatrical  effectiveness,  in  the 
obvious  sense,  but  to  their  quality  of  ethical 
significance.  There  is  no  "  mush "  about 
them,  no  theatrical  hysteria,  no  blinking  at  the 
ultimate  facts.  They  go  down  after  first  prin- 
ciples. That  is  what  every  drama  must  do 
which  raises  a  moral  issue,  if  it  is  to  endure. 
That  is  why  "  The  Servant  in  the  House  "  is  a 
better  play  than  "  The  Passing  of  the  Third 
Floor  Back."  And  that  is  why  Ibsen  looms  so 
large  in  dramatic  history. 

It  was  not  much  the  fashion,  before  Ibsen,  to 
raise  moral  issues  in  the  drama  written  in  Eng- 
lish —  at  any  rate  consciously.  Since  Ibsen, 
in  all  lands,  what  the  drama  has  lost  in  pure 
narrative  interest,  in  poetry  and  romance,  it 
has  gained  in  sociological  import.  We  now 
use  the  stage  to  correct  social  abuses,  to  preach 
vegetarianism,  telepathy.  Christian  Science,  to 
proselytize  for  religion,  to  do  a  thousand  and 
one  things  of  more  or  less  ethical  value,  before 
undreamed.  The  craftsmen  of  the  theatre 
admire  Ibsen  for  the  wonderful  technique  he 
has  forged  for  their  use,  a  technique  which  has 
boiled  away  soliloquys  and  asides  and  fused  the 
exposition  with  the  progress  of  the  drama.  But 
the  though  ful  layman  admires  him  most  for 
his  junsparing  tracking  down  of  principles,  his 
uncompromising  refusal  to  gain  a  momentary 
effect,  however  telling,  at  the  expense  of  the 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  199 

whole  truth.  Several  of  his  plays  have  been 
popular  in  our  theatre  and  are  growing  more 
so.  Others  have  not  been  popular.  The  Phil- 
istines have  scoffed.  Many  of  us  have  more  or 
less  honestly  professed  that  we  did  not  com- 
prehend. Much  ink  has  been  spilled.  Names 
have  been  called.  But  meantime  Ibsen's  in- 
fluence continues  to  grow,  and  that  influence 
is  more  important  than  any  specific  play  he 
ever  wrote. 

That  influence  is  an  influence  for  moral  hon- 
esty in  the  drama,  against  the  shams  of  stage 
conventions;  for  principles  against  stage  trick- 
ery. There  is  not  a  moment  in  "  Pillars  of 
Society  "  when  the  words  or  actions  of  that 
arch  hypocrite.  Consul  Bernick,  are  not  care- 
fully calculated  to  tell  at  their  true  ethical  value 
for  the  beholder.  In  "  Little  Eyolf  "  and  "  A 
Doll's  House  "  problems  of  marriage  are  raised 
and  faced  squarely  to  the  bitter  end.  In 
"  Ghosts  "  the  morals  of  the  play  go  back  from 
the  son  to  the  father  with  horrible  insistence. 
This  man  troubles,  disturbs,  even  shocks  us  in 
the  theatre,  because  we  have  been  too  much 
accustomed  to  accept  any  ethics  in  the  play- 
house so  long  as  it  resulted  in  scenes  of  mo- 
mentary effectiveness,  and  too  little  accustomed 
to  holding  hard  on  principles.  Ibsen  makes  his 
momentary  situations  so  dependent  for  their 
force  on  remote  causes  that  his  plays  baffle  us 


200  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

as  life  baffles  us  —  and  we  say  that  we  cannot 
understand  him! 

It  has  been  the  mission  of  Ibsen,  in  part 
through  his  direct  appeal  to  audiences,  in  still 
larger  part  through  his  appeal  to  other  play- 
wrights, to  create  dissatisfaction  with  senti- 
mentalized or  false  morality  in  the  drama,  to 
teach  the  need  when  a  moral  issue  is  raised  of 
facing  it  squarely  and  honestly  and  holding 
the  whole  play  true  to  its  underlying  principles. 
Why  is  it  so  very  difficult  for  some  worthy 
theatregoers  to  understand  his  significance? 

In  1909  Joseph  Medill  Patterson  produced  a 
play  in  New  York  called  "  The  Fourth  Estate," 
which  showed  vividly  and  sincerely  the  diffi- 
culties of  conducting  a  modern  American  news- 
paper with  absolute  honesty,  ignoring  all  the 
seductions  of  advertising,  social,  and  political 
patronage.  His  morality  in  that  play  was 
sound  and  uncompromising  and  his  conclusion 
was  at  first  tragic.  But  the  New  York  theatre- 
goers first  imposed  a  happy  ending  and  later 
rejected  the  play  altogether.  Fortunately, 
Chicago  was  more  receptive.  But  there  was  a 
play  —  not  without  its  faults  of  clumsy  con- 
struction and  beginner's  crudeness,  to  be  sure 
—  which  was  "  thought  out,"  which  raised  a 
moral  issue,  looked  at  it  in  all  its  phases,  and 
then  bent  every  episode  of  the  drama  to  con- 
form to  the  i)rinciple  at  stake,  instead  of  ignor- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  201 

ing  the  principle  to  make  the  situations  mo- 
mentarily appealing  to  the  emotions  of  the  mob. 
Such  another  play,  too,  which  raised  a  moral 
issue,  thought  it  out,  both  its  causes  and  its 
effects,  and  held  the  episodes  of  the  drama  true 
to  it,  was  Miss  Rachel  Crothers's  "  A  Man's 
World,"  acted  by  Miss  Mary  Mannering. 

These  were  two  of  the  most  interesting  and 
significant  native  plays  of  the  winter  of  1909- 
10.  Their  authors,  having  propounded  a  moral 
question,  like  Ibsen  met  it  unflinchingly, 
putting  away  temptation  for  the  easy  tear  or 
the  loud  guffaw,  for  the  momentary  theatrical 
thrill,  in  the  interests  of  significant  truth. 
These  authors  have  the  sense  and  the  courage 
to  think  not  of  what  the  public  wants  —  or 
what  they  may  suppose  it  wants  —  but  of  what 
is  the  real  meaning,  the  cause  and  solution,  of 
the  moral  problems  their  plays  present.  Until 
our  playwrights  do  this,  we  cannot  have  a 
serious  and  significant  drama  of  contemporary 
American  life,  because  we  cannot  have  a  drama 
which  holds  fast  to  real  moral  principles,  to 
reality.  Fortunately,  however,  by  every  sign 
our  better  playwrights  are  thinking  less  and 
less  of  what  seems  immediately  effective  in  the 
theatre  and  more  and  more  of  what  is  ulti- 
mately true.  And  what  is  ultimately  true  is, 
after  all,  what  is  ultimately  effective,  even  on 
Broadway. 


gOa  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

BARE    FEET   AND    BEETHOVEN 

A   TERPSICHOREAN    FANTASY 

[A  curious  craze  to  witness  the  "  interpretation  " 
of  music  in  terms  of  the  dance,  especially  the  dance 
of  females  unencumbered  even  by  the  scant  cos- 
tume of  the  traditional  ballet,  swept  over  the  coun- 
try during  the  season  of  1909-10,  having  begun 
with  the  dances  of  Miss  Duncan  and  the  Salome 
posturings  of  Miss  Gertrude  Hoffman  during  the 
previous  year.  Carnegie  Hall  and  the  Metropolitan 
Opera  House  in  New  York,  the  sacred  precincts  of 
Symphony  Hall  in  Boston,  and  other  temples  of 
music,  were  given  over  to  the  display  of  gyrating 
females  with  bare  legs.  The  phenomenon  was,  per- 
haps, unintelligible  to  the  mere  male  —  save  in  one 
obvious  respect;  but  the  impression  which  it  made 
upon  the  present  writer  is  adequately  expressed  in 
the  skit  which  follows.] 

CHARACTERS 

IzzY-DO-A  Cancan. 

Maud  All-line. 

Ruth  Sandy-knee. 

Ta-ra-ra  de  Swirlsky. 

Gertrude  Hopman. 

LoiE  Fool-yer. 

The  Ghost  of  Ludwig  van  Beethoven. 

The  Boston  Symphony  Orchestra. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  203 

The  Philharmonic  Orchestra. 

The  Kneisel  Quartet. 

Chorus  of  Muses. 

Music  kindly  furnished  by  Mozart,  Handel,  Bee- 
thoven, Mendelssohn,  Richard  Strauss, 
Chopin,  George  M.  Cohan,  and  others. 

CosTUAiES  by  the  Adam  &  Eve  Company,  Lim- 
ited, Fig  Lane,  Garden  of  Eden. 


Explanatory  Prologue,  spoken  by  the  Ghost  of 
Beethoven 

"  Ladies  —  and  the  gentleman  in  the  second 
rov^  to  the  left : 

"  In  my  day  —  w^hich,  as  some  of  you  may  be 
av^are,  v^as  a  long  time  ago  —  silly  people  were 
content  to  listen  to  music.  They  did  not  de- 
mand program  notes;  they  thought,  poor 
things,  that  they  understood  a  symphony  with- 
out the  aid  of  a  dancer  to  interpret  it;  they 
were  ignorantly  unacquainted  with  the  subtle 
connection  between  a  thematic  melody  pro- 
claimed by  the  wood-winds  and  waving  arms; 
between  the  contrapuntal  development  of  a 
fugue  and  bare  feet.  Those  were  the  elder 
days  of  art.  What  an  esthetic  darkness  we 
labored  in! 

"  Now,  I  am  happy  to  say,  all  this  has  been 
changed.     Music  is  no  longer  simply  music. 


204  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

First  my  good  friend  Richard  Strauss  saw  to 
that,  and  next  my  equally  good  friend  Izzy-do-a 
Cancan  still  further  developed  the  field.  Bare 
feet  have  at  last  taken  their  rightful  place  in 
the  interpretation  of  orchestral  music.  No  or- 
chestra is  complete  any  longer  without  at  least 
one  pair.  Had  I  known  enough  when  I  com- 
posed my  symphonies,  I  should  have  scored 
them  for  strings,  wood-wind,  drums,  cymbals, 
and  ladies'  legs. 

"  Excellent  as  is  the  intelligence  of  those 
dancers  who  have  interpreted  my  works,  I 
must,  as  a  conscientious  composer,  admit  that 
had  I  written  all  the  parts  myself  I  should  have 
arranged  some  of  my  effects  differently.  Take 
the  opening  of  my  Fifth  Symphony,  for  ex- 
ample. There,  instead  of  the  justly  famed 
knocking  of  fate  being  sounded  by  the  kettle- 
drums and  strings,  why  not  have  the  dancer 
kick  at  the  door  ?  It  would  be  nothing  less  than 
superb!  No  true  artist  would  object  on  the 
ground  of  being  barefoot. 

"  But  I  digress.  We  are  met  here  this  after- 
noon, ladies  —  and  the  gentleman  in  the  second 
row  to  the  left  —  for  a  grand  musical  orgy. 
Several  musicians  of  some  local  celebrity  have 
kindly  consented  to  furnish  incidental  sounds, 
which  will  be  played  by  many  internationally 
celebrated  bare  feet,  aided  l)y  the  Boston  Sym- 
phony Orchestra  and  the  New  York  Philhar- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  205 

monic  band.  You  will  also  be  glad  to  hear,  I 
am  sure,  that  my  friend  Franz  Kneisel,  who 
hitherto  has  shown  a  rather  hidebound  and  nar- 
rowly conservative  spirit  toward  the  new  art, 
has  at  last  consented  to  add  a  pair  of  legs  to  his 
excellent  organization,  and  that  that  organiza- 
tion will  henceforth  be  heard  in  bedchamber 
music. 

"  The  concert  will  conclude  with  a  grand 
finale  by  all  the  dancers  and  a  chorus  of  muses, 
both  bands,  and  the  bedchamber  quartet,  with 
other  attractions  yet  to  be  announced. 

"  The  first  number  on  our  program,  ladies 
—  and  the  gentleman  in  the  second  row  to  the 
left  —  will  be  an  interpretation  by  Miss  Ruth 
Sandy-knee  of  the  well-known  Buddhist  doc- 
trine of  Nirvana.  Nirvana,  I  need  hardly  re- 
mind you,  means,  to  the  Hindu,  annihilation, 
nothingness.    Lights  down,  please!  " 

The  house  is  plunged  in  darkness.  The  cur- 
tains part,  disclosing  a  dimly  lighted  stage, 
zvith  one  bright  spot  in  the  centre.  Into  this 
bright  spot  conies  Miss  Ruth  Sandy-knee.  As 
the  light  streams  full  upon  her,  the  significance 
of  her  dance  is  apparent.  She  represents  Nir- 
vana —  nothingness  —  by  her  costume. 

As  the  curtains  close  again,  the  ladies  in  the 
audience  gasp: 

"  Hozv  subtle!" 

The  Ghost  of  Beethoven  —  *'  Now,  ladies 


206  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

—  and  the  gentleman  in  the  second  row  to  the 
left  —  we  will  listen  to  a  dance  by  Miss  Maud 
All-line,  with  sounds  by  Mr.  Kneisel's  men  — 
my  Quartet  in  C  Sharp  Minor,  Opus  131  —  the 
one  which  has  given  a  century  of  critics  so 
much  difficulty  to  understand." 

The  curtains  part,  disclosing  the  four  musi- 
cians seated  at  the  extreme  rear  of  the  stage, 
in  a  corner.  They  play.  Miss  Maud  All-line 
bursts  through  the  heavy  draperies  at  the  hack. 
She  is  clad  in  a  yard  of  mosquito-netting  and  a 
sweet  smile,  which  rapidly  changes  to  a  look  of 
unutterable  zvoe.  She  waves  her  arms  above 
her  head  unceasingly,  does  a  few  simple  steps 
witJi  her  bare  feet  round  and  round  the  stage, 
monotonously,  and  finally  falls  in  a  heap.  The 
curtains  close,  and  the  ladies  murmur: 

"  We  never  understood  Beethoven' s  quartet 
before  I" 

The  Ghost  of  Beethoven  —  "I  am  sure, 
ladies  —  and  the  gentleman  in  the  second  row 
to  the  left  —  that  you  now  grasp  fully  my  mean- 
ing in  this  composition.  I  did  not  quite  realize 
myself,  before,  what  I  meant.  In  fact,  I 
thought  it  was  something  quite  different.  We 
will  now  listen  to  a  dance  by  Miss  Ta-ra-ra  de 
Swirlsky,  with  incidental  sounds  by  Mr. 
Mahler's  band  —  the  Fifth  Nocturne  and  a 
prelude,  both  by  Chopin.  I  regret  that  the  com- 
poser could  not  be  present  in  person.    He  was 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  207 

unavoidably  detained  by  a  bad  attack  of  tem- 
perature —  I  mean  temperament.  But  he  sent 
word  that  he  was  glad  to  learn  of  his  mistake. 
You  see,  he  thought  he  had  composed  these 
pieces  to  be  played  upon  the  old-fashioned 
pianoforte ! " 

The  curtains  part.  Mr.  Mahler  takes  his 
place  before  the  band,  which  is  concealed  in  the 
cellar.  Miss  Ta-ra-ra  de  Swirlsky  enters,  wear- 
ing a  similar  costume  to  Miss  All-line,  save 
that  her  mosquito-netting  is  red  and  she  uses  a 
different  brand  of  dental  paste.  She  waves  her 
arms  rather  less  than  Miss  All-line,  but  she 
interprets  much  more  energetically  zvith  her 
other  members.  The  subtle  differentiation  of 
her  interpretation  is  best  indicated  by  the  fact 
that  she  does  not  fall  down  upon  the  stage  at 
the  conclusion.  This  shows  that  Chopin,  in  the 
Fifth  Nocturne  had  not  yet  reached  the  depth  of 
cosmic  philosophy  attained  by  Beethoven  when 
he  wrote  his  great  quartet.  As  the  curtains 
close,  the  ladies  murmur  ecstatically. 

The  Ghost  of  Beethoven  —  "Next,  ladies 
—  and  the  gentleman  in  the  second  row  to  the 
left  — we  will  listen  to  a  dance  by  Miss  Izzy- 
do-a  Cancan,  with  incidental  sounds  by  the 
Boston  Symphony  Orchestra.  The  work 
chosen  for  interpretation  is  none  other  than 
my  Seventh  Symphony." 

The  curtains  part,  showing  that  the  stage, 


208  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

hangings  Jiaz'c  been  cJianged  to  baby-bine. 
Miss  Izzy-do-a  Cancan  appears,  clad  in  a  white 
lace  pocket-handkerchief .  She,  too,  waves  her 
arms  and  circles  the  stage,  but  it  may  be  noted, 
by  careful  observation,  that  she  occasionally 
dances.  This  is  the  subtle  fragrance  of  her  in- 
terpretation, its  glorious  intellectuality.  The 
symphony  is  based  upon  dance  rhythms!  She 
occasionally  dances!!  The  ladies  explain  this 
to  one  another  after  the  curtains  close  again. 
There  is  a  rustling  murmur  of  excitement.  It 
is  almost  educational. 

The  Ghost  of  Beethoven  —  "  And  now, 
ladies  —  and  the  gentleman  in  the  second  row 
to  the  left  —  why,  where  has  he  gone?  —  well, 
no  matter  —  now,  ladies,  I  have  a  regrettable 
announcement  to  make.  Miss  All-line  and  Miss 
Hopman  were  to  have  interpreted  in  turn,  for 
purposes  of  artistic  comparison,  the  dance  of 
Salome.  But  this  number  will  have  to  be 
omitted.  The  management,  you  see,  seriously 
objected.  They  refused  to  allow  any  dead 
heads  in  the  house!  So,  instead,  Miss  All-line 
and  Miss  Hopman  have  kindly  consented  to 
give,  one  after  the  other,  interpretations  of 
Menflclssohn's  '  Spring  Song,'  played  by  the 
combined  Boston  Symphony  and  New  York 
Philharmonic  Orchestras,  with  six  automobile- 
horns  and  a  wind-machine  for  realistic  atmo- 
sphere." 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  209 

The  curtains  part,  disclosing  Miss  All-line 
modestly  clad  in  a  white  tulle  veil,  zvhich 
reaches  to  her  ankles.  She  runs  lightly  round 
and  round  the  stage  picking  up  tacks,  zvhich  she 
subtly  interprets  as  zvild  Uozvers  and  sniffs  at 
ecstatically.  The  ladies,  at  the  conclusion, 
murmur: 

''Did  you  see  her  costume — long  and  zvarni? 
That  means  that  she  interprets  the  spring  of  a 
northern  clime  —  a  Nezu  England  spring,  per- 
haps.   Is  it  not  zjuonderfid?  " 

Once  more  the  music  begins  dozvn  cellar, 
and  enter  Miss  Gertrude  Hopman,  clad  in  a 
red  rosebud.  Miss  Hopman  hops  up  and 
dozvti,  and  she  is  follozved  by  all  the  Muses, 
zvlio  also  hop  up  and  dozvn.  Red  paper  roses 
and  other  vivid  Hozvers  are  scattered  about 
the  stage.  Little  bare  boys  enter,  playing 
upon  property  pipes  of  Pan.  The  dance  grozus 
animated.     The  ladies  murmur: 

''Again  zvonderful!  Hers  is  the  spring  of 
the  sunny  southland  —  her  costume  indicated 
that,  and  the  red,  red  Hozvers.  It  is  a  pagan 
spring;  the  other  zvas  Puritan.  Is  n't  it  mar- 
velous  that  Mendelssohn  could  thus  conceal  tzvo 
meanings  in  his  pretty  zvork?  " 

The  Ghost  of  Beethoven  —  "Now,  ladies, 
I  have  a  treat  for  you.  Miss  Loie  Fool-yer  will 
interpret  the  '  Hallelujah  Chorus,'  from  Han- 
del's '  Messiah/  with  her  hands." 


210  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

TJic  lioiisc  is  plunged  in  darkness.  The  cur- 
tains part,  shozving  a  black  stage,  with  the  dim 
figures  of  the  Muses  crouching  upon  it.  At 
the  rear,  in  a  bright  spotlight  sited  dozvn  from 
above,  stands  Miss  Fool-yer,  in  a  black  robe 
and  cozvl,  so  that  only  her  zjuhite  arms  and 
hands  are  visible.  As  the  music  sounds,  she 
lifts  her  arms,  the  hands  Happing  loosely  from 
the  zvrists,  and  zvaves  them  in  time  to  the  band. 
Gradually  she  raises  them  higher  and  higher, 
finally  clapping  them  together.  The  Muses 
suddenly  rise  and  a  spot-light  falls  upon  each. 
They,  too,  clap  their  hands.  Everybody  claps 
her  hands.  The  Ghost  of  Beethoven  claps  his 
hands.  The  curtains  close  amid  a  thunder  of 
applause. 

The  Ghost  of  Beethoven  —  "I  am  sure, 
ladies,  that  you  have  been  impressed  aHke  by, 
the  novelty  of  this  performance,  its  revelation 
of  hitherto  unguessed  forms  of  musical  ex- 
pression, and  by  its  deep  religious  devotion. 
It  was,  indeed,  the  '  Rhapsody  of  the  Glad 
Hand  ' !  Our  program  will  now  conclude  with 
a  grand  fmale  by  all  the  dancers,  the  Muses, 
the  combined  orchestra,  and  the  bedchamber 
quartet,  together  with  the  automobile-horns, 
the  wind-machine,  six  jew's-harps,  and  a  pony 
ballet  of  clog-dancers  performing  on  a  sound- 
ing-board behind  the  scenes.  The  work  chosen 
for    interpretation    is    none    other    than    Mr. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  211 

George  M.  Cohan's  justly  admired  master- 
piece, *  Harrigan.' 

*'  The  ladies  are  poHtely  requested  to  keep 
their  seats  and  not  to  put  on  their  hats  and 
rubbers  until  the  conclusion  of  the  performance. 
We  wish  to  preserve  the  artistic  continuity  of 
the  mood." 

The  curtains  part,  showing  bright  green 
hangings,  with  Irish  harps  prominently  dis- 
played. Over  all  is  draped  an  American  flag, 
tied  with  green  bows.  The  music  opens  with  a 
fanfare  of  automobile-horns,  followed  by  a 
moaning  andante  on  the  wind-machine,  a  brace 
of  resonant  chords  from  the  jew's-harps,  and 
then  the  full  orchestra,  forte,  the  rhythm  accen- 
tuated by  the  clog-steppers  in  the  wings.  The 
dancers  enter  with  a  whirl,  clad  in  green  gauze, 
with  shamrock  wreaths  in  their  hair.  In  addi- 
tion to  this  symbolism  of  their  costume,  their 
interpretation  of  this  diificult  and  obscure  piece 
of  music  is  of  wonderful  subtlety.  Each  dances 
just  as  her  personal  whim  dictates.  This  sig- 
niHes  Home  Ride! 

The  audience  goes  mad  with  esthetic  en- 
thusiasm and  crowds  tozvard  the  stage,  reck- 
lessly hurling  bunches  of  violets,  boxes  of 
candy,  orchids,  powder-puffs  and  gold  net 
purses  at  the  dancers,  who  show  their  skill  by 
picking  up  these  tokens  of  appreciation  without 
losing  the  rhythm. 


212  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  concert,  the  dancers 
are  seen,  zvrapped  in  furs,  leaving  the  stage 
entrance  in  their  motor-cars.  The  Ghost  of 
Beethoven,  in  a  threadbare  coat  of  ancient  pat- 
tern, starts  shivering  toward  the  Subway. 


Part  III 


SOME  POPULAR  ERRORS  IN  THE 
JUDGMENT   OF   ACTING 

"  "T  "V  T  H Y  do  people  fight  over  the  ques- 

^A/  tion,  *  Is  John  Drew  an  actor'?" 
'  ~  asked  the  Critic,  wearily.  "  As  if 
there  were  any  doubt  about  it ! " 

''You  mean  he  isn't?"  said  the  Mere 
Person. 

"  I  mean  he  is !  "  roared  the  Critic. 

"How  do  you  make  that  out?"  said  the 
Mere  Person,  with  annoying  independence. 
"  He  always  plays  himself." 

"  One  of  the  hardest  of  all  things  to  play  — 
and  make  it  interesting!"  the  Critic  retorted. 
"  Try  it  once  yourself." 

"  Well,  you  need  n't  get  personal,"  the  other 
replied.    "  And  you  '11  have  to  show  me." 

And  so  the  ever-burning  topic,  "  Is  John 
Drew  an  actor  ? "  was  once  more  thrashed 
out. 

You,  Gentle  Reader,  have  more  or  less  gently 
joined  in  that  debate,  have  you  not?  Of  course 
you  were  on  the  Critic's  side;  but  somebody 
took  the  other  side.  How  is  it  possible  that 
there  should  be  another  side  ?    Why  should  we 


216  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

not  call  a  proficient  artist  like  Mr.  Drew  an 
actor,  just  as  we  call  Caruso  a  singer? 

It  is  because  the  art  of  acting  is  more  gener- 
ally observed  and  commented  upon  by  the  pub- 
lic, and  less  generally  understood,  than  any 
other  art;  the  standards  are  confused,  the  prin- 
ciples misconceived,  and  the  technical  problems 
unfamiliar.  Most  of  us  who  know  nothing 
about  music  are  sensible  enough  to  let  those  who 
do  say  at  least  the  final  word  about  the  merits  of 
a  singer  or  a  violinist.  Most  of  us  who  are  un- 
familiar with  pictures  are  humbly  disposed  to 
accept  the  judgment  of  experts,  or  to  try  to 
learn  wisdom  where  we  have  it  not.  But  of 
plays,  and  more  especially  of  acting,  every  last 
one  of  us,  from  the  Tired  Business  Man  to 
his  weary  wife  and  chocolate-drop-consuming 
daughter,  "  knows  what  he  likes,"  and  is  ready 
with  a  dogmatic  opinion  at  tea  table  or  dinner 
board.  And  no  two  of  us  mean  quite  the  same 
thing  by  acting,  no  two  of  us  judge  it  by  the 
same  standards.  We  judge  it  according  to  per- 
sonal whim,  not  artistic  laws  —  for  acting  has 
its  laws.  And,  as  a  result,  there  is  more  foolish 
chatter  about  the  stage  than  about  any  other 
subject  men  and  women  expend  their  breath 
upon. 

Acting,  of  course,  first  and  foremost,  is  the 
art  of  expressing  with  the  body,  the  voice,  the 
manner,  the  playwright's  conception  of  a  char- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  217 

acter  and  the  playwright's  meaning  in  his  play. 
The  test  is  not  at  all  whether  the  actor  looked 
and  talked  like  somebody  else  than  himself,  but 
whether,  even  if  he  did  look  and  talk  like  him- 
self, he  made  himself  fit  consistently  with  the 
character  of  the  play,  and  left  at  the  close  a 
definite  idea  of  the  author's  intentions. 

Now,  suppose  that  you  dressed  up  like  Santa 
Claus,  with  beard  and  cap  and  cloak,  assumed 
a  strange  voice  and  rolling  gait,  and  endeav- 
ored to  hoax  your  kiddies.  Would  not  your 
task  be  much  easier  than  if  you  appeared  before 
them  in  your  proper  person  and  told  them  you 
were  the  gas  man  come  to  read  the  meter  ?  We 
are  all  more  or  less  children  in  the  theatre ;  we 
go  there  to  "  pretend,"  and  to  watch  others 
*'  pretend."  And  it  is  by  no  means  the  sign  of 
superior  acting  that  we  are  more  fooled  by  the 
man  who  wears  the  false  whiskers,  in  other 
words  by  what  the  players  call  the  "  character 
actor." 

One  of  the  most  common  of  all  errors  in  the 
judgment  of  acting,  indeed,  is  the  failure  to 
realize  the  greater  difficulty  of  playing  a 
"  straight  part,"  over  playing  a  "  character 
part."  It  is  simply  because  the  present  genera- 
tion knows  Mr.  Drew  only  as  an  actor  in 
"  straight  parts  "  that  it  is  possible  for  any- 
body to  question  his  ability  to  act. 

By  a  character  part  is  meant  not  alone  a  part 


218  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

which  calls  for  a  greater  or  less  disguising  of 
the  actor's  form  or  features,  a  sharp  contrast 
between  his  actual  appearance  and  his  stage 
appearance,  a  physical  impersonation ;  but  any 
part  which  is  sharply  defined  as  a  type  or  de- 
parts vividly  from  the  normal  of  the  audience. 
In  such  a  play  as  "  Shore  Acres,"  for  example, 
practically  all  the  roles  were  character  parts,  ac- 
cording to  the  professional  definition.  In  "  The 
Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back  "  they  are  all 
character  parts,  their  very  titles  defining  them 
as  such  —  "A  Painted  Lady,"  "  A  Shrew," 
"  A  Cheat,"  and  so  on.  They  are  clearly 
marked  types,  their  outlines  sharply  indicated 
by  the  author. 

A  straight  part,  on  the  other  hand,  is  one 
which  presents  no  sharp  outlines,  which  does 
not  depart  from  the  normal,  which  represents 
what  is,  for  the  audience,  the  average  man  or 
woman.  Because  the  actor  naturally  chosen 
for  such  a  part  is  himself  such  a  man,  he  plays 
it  without  disguise  of  make-up  and  tries  to  give 
it  charm  and  interest  and  vividness  according 
to  the  measure  of  his  own  personality  as  well 
as  of  his  art.  But  just  because  of  this  fact,  just 
because  of  the  obvious  infusion  of  his  person- 
ality, while  his  technical  difficulties  are  greater 
than  those  of  the  character  actor,  the  public, 
knowing  nothing  of  technical  problems,  de- 
clares dogmatically  that  he  is  no  actor,  that  he 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  219 

is  "  just  playing  himself."  It  may,  however, 
be  noted  that  this  same  public  unconsciously 
recognizes  his  art  by  going  season  after  season 
to  see  him  play,  although  attributing  his  merits 
entirely  to  his  personality.  Personality  alone 
never  carried  any  player  very  far. 

In  the  majority  of  plays  the  character  parts 
and  the  straight  parts  go  side  by  side.  During 
the  performance,  it  is  the  former  we  often  seem 
to  enjoy  the  more.  But  it  will  be  noted  that  the 
leading  actors  are  usually  playing  the  latter. 
The  players  will  tell  you  this  is  because  it  is 
comparatively  easy  to  find  character  actors ;  it 
is  extremely  difficult  to  secure  adequate  inter- 
preters for  the  straight  parts.  "  The  character 
actors,"  they  would  express  it,  "  get  $50  a  week, 
the  '  straight  leading  men,'  who  look  like  gentle- 
men, know  how  to  hold  a  tea  cup,  and  can  make 
convincing  love,  get  $400."  And  it  is  not  alone, 
nor  even  chiefly,  personality  which  is  thus  re- 
warded.   It  is  largely  technical  proficiency. 

Mr.  Forbes-Robertson's  company,  playing 
*'  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back,"  has 
been  highly  praised  for  its  excellence;  it  has, 
indeed,  been  held  up  as  an  example  of  what  an 
English  company  can  be,  to  shame  our  native 
players.  Yet  it  is  in  no  wise  an  exceptional 
company.  If  the  same  actors  were  to  appear 
in  a  high  comedy  of  modern  manners,  playing 
straight  parts,  we  should  at  once  indignantly 


220  AT    THE    NEW   THEATRE 

declare  that  if  Mr.  Forbes-Robertson  fancies 
he  can  bring  over  such  an  aggregation  of  sec- 
ond rate  players  to  America  and  fool  us,  he  is 
mightily  mistaken!  Indeed,  if  the  numerous 
roles  in  "  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor 
Back,"  all  of  which  are  important  and  con- 
stantly on  view,  were  not  character  parts,  Mr. 
Forbes-Robertson  could  not  afford  to  bring  the 
play  to  America  at  all,  because  he  could  not 
afford  to  pay  the  salaries.  Salaries  are  deter- 
mined by  the  laws  of  supply  and  demand.  If  it 
is  not  more  difficult  to  play  a  straight  part,  why 
should  the  supply  of  players  be  so  much 
smaller? 

The  character  part,  of  course,  offers  to  the 
player  a  definite,  sharp  mould.  His  work  has 
been  more  than  half  done  by  the  playwright. 
The  straight  part  offers  to  the  player  little  more 
than  an  opportunity,  and  what  he  makes  of  it 
depends  largely  on  himself.  The  plays  of  Clyde 
Fitch  were  noted  for  their  wealth  of  small  but 
vivid  and  amusing  character  parts  —  "  bits," 
the  actors  call  them.  When  those  plays  were 
first  presented  the  public  used  to  greet  each  new 
character  role  with  delight,  and  predict  great 
things  of  the  actor  or  actress  who  portrayed 
it  so  vividly.  The  star,  or  the  leading  man,  on 
the  other  hand,  used  frequently  to  be  dismissed 
with  the  remark  that  "  they  were  just  playing 
themselves  again."    I  have  watched  these  same 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  221 

plays  later,  on  the  road  or  produced  by  stock 
companies,  and  seen  other  players  get  exactly 
the  same  effects  in  the  character  parts.  And 
where  are  the  players  to-day  of  whom  such 
great  things  were  originally  predicted?  They 
are  still  playing  "  bits."  Some  of  them,  to  be 
sure,  were  promoted  into  larger  roles,  and  it 
was  then  discovered  that  they  could  not  act. 
Their  parts  had  done  the  trick,  not  they. 
Meanwhile  the  despised  stars,  who  had  "  only 
played  themselves,"  are  still  prominently  before 
the  public,  because  they  can  act. 

For,  if  a  play  is  respectably  written,  it  falls 
not  on  the  character  "  bits  "  to  carry  its  mean- 
ing and  its  real  emotional  appeal  but  on  the 
leading  roles.  In  the  modern  drama  probably 
the  majority  of  these  leading  roles  are  straight 
parts.  Under  our  so-called  star  system,  a  pop- 
ular player  selects  a  role  which  seems  to  chime 
with  his  or  her  physical  attributes  and  tempera- 
ment, and  then  plays  it  without  any  disguise. 
Now  this,  in  reality,  is  quite  as  much  of  a  hin- 
drance as  a  help.  Let  a  young  man  don  a  gray 
wig,  totter  over  a  cane,  speak  in  a  cracked  fal- 
setto, and  if  his  imitation  of  old  age  is  at  all 
faithful  half  the  audience  will  declare  he  is 
acting.  Let  the  same  young  man,  in  his  proper 
person,  go  through  a  play  making  delicately 
every  point  indicated  by  the  author,  leaving  at 
the  end  a  definite  and  correct  impression  of 


222  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

what  the  play  was  intended  to  convey,  and  half 
the  audience  will  tell  you  he  was  not  acting  at 
all.  Yet,  in  reality,  he  was  doing  vastly  the 
more  difficult  thing. 

Charles  Hawtrey,  one  of  the  most  expert 
light  comedians  on  the  English-speaking  stage, 
can  point  a  comic  "  aside  "  with  a  delicacy  and 
humor  and  utter  spontaneity  quite  unrivalled. 
It  is  the  perfection  of  art.  Yet  we  have  all 
heard  it  said  that  Mr.  Hawtrey  "  merely  plays 
himself."  Mr.  Frank  Worthing,  one  of  the 
best  light  comedians  in  America,  has  mastered 
the  difficult  art  of  so  playing  a  comic  scene  that 
he  at  once  lets  the  audience  into  the  full  fun, 
but,  in  his  stage  character,  is  sublimely  un- 
conscious of  anything  ludicrous.  As  a  leading 
man  in  comedy,  Mr.  Worthing  can  give  meas- 
ure for  measure  to  any  woman  star  in  the  coun- 
try. They  all  know  this,  and  his  services  are 
in  constant  demand  from  such  of  them  as  are 
not  afraid  of  the  comparison.  Yet  the  public 
will  tell  you  he  is  "  always  Frank  Worthing," 
and  his  popular  fame  is  infinitely  less  than  his 
rare  skill  as  an  actor  deserves. 

As  for  Mr.  John  Drew,  he  could  doubtless 
give  a  delightful  performance  of  John  Drew  if 
he  chose.  But  the  fact  is,  he  chooses  to  per- 
form the  characters  in  his  plays.  That  he  se- 
lects such  characters  as  he  can  plausibly  repre- 
sent without  make-up  or  an  undue  strain  upon 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  223 

his  imagination  is  his  look  out.  The  test  of 
his  abiHty  to  act  is,  does  he  present  a  consistent 
character,  and  the  one  drawn  by  the  play- 
wright; does  he  make  the  points  of  dialogue 
and  action  intended  by  the  author;  does  he 
bring  the  part  and  the  play  to  life,  making  them 
real  to  the  emotions  and  clear  to  the  intelli- 
gence? There  can,  in  most  cases,  be  but  one 
answer.  If  anybody  has  any  doubt,  let  him  see 
one  of  Mr.  Drew's  parts  played  by  someone 
else.  Indeed,  in  such  a  play  as  "  Inconstant 
George,"  it  should  be  enough  to  watch  the 
other  players,  their  awkwardness  accentuated 
by  Mr,  Drew's  repose,  their  stiffness  by  his 
life-likeness,  their  clumsy,  ineffectual,  parrot 
repetitions  of  the  witty  epigrams  by  his  deli- 
cious pointing  of  them,  so  that  they  sound  like 
human  speech  and  rouse  the  desired  mirth. 

To  impart  interest,  distinction,  variety,  emo- 
tional force,  sincerity  to  a  role  which  leaves 
everything  to  the  actor  and  which,  in  addition, 
carries  the  message  of  the  play,  is  a  difficult 
task.  It  is  only  for  the  trained  artists,  who 
have  a  wide  command  of  the  tools  of  their  trade. 
The  play  may  be  trivial,  the  role  unimportant, 
but  the  art  is  needed,  just  the  same.  You  can- 
not fool  all  of  the  people  all  of  the  time.  If  John 
Drew  and  Charles  Hawtrey  and  Miss  Ethel 
Barrymore  and  even  Miss  Maxine  Elliott,  for 
instance,  could  not  act,  they  would  long  ago 


224  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

have  lost  their  vogiie.  Miss  Marie  Doro  was 
too  soon  promoted  to  stardom,  and  Miss  Doris 
Keene.  Even  Miss  BilHe  Burke,  who  enjoyed 
great  popularity  for  a  time,  is  palling.  She 
lacks  the  skill  to  impart  life  and  variety  to  her 
playing.    She  cloys,  like  a  dirmer  of  dessert. 

Another  error  in  the  judgment  of  acting  re- 
sults from  the  contempt  for  comedy.  Of  course, 
the  comic  plays  prosper  more,  because  we  all 
instinctively  prefer  to  laugh.  But  we  instinc- 
tively attribute  to  the  "  emotional  actress  "  a 
greater  glory  than  to  the  comedienne.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  it  is  easier  to  be  emotional  than 
to  be  successfully  funny,  on  the  high  plane  of 
true  comedy.  The  great  comedians  of  either 
sex  are  far  rarer  than  the  great  tragic  players. 

I  once  saw  Miss  Lena  Ashwell  and  Miss 
Margaret  Anglin  alternate  as  Mrs.  Dane  and 
Lady  Eastney  in  "  Mrs.  Dane's  Defence."  Miss 
Ashwell  was  doleful  as  Lady  Eastney,  but  Miss 
Anglin  (perhaps  not  so  effective  as  Mrs.  Dane) 
gave  a  brilliant  comedy  performance.  That 
ranked  her  at  once  as  a  superior  artist.  The 
emotional  scene  carries  its  own  weapons;  the 
situation  puts  us  in  a  receptive  mood,  and  to 
tears  and  sobs  on  the  stage  we  are  only  too 
ready  to  respond.  But  true  comedy  —  not 
farce  or  horse  play,  but  the  comedy  which  dis- 
closes the  mirth  behind  serious  life,  whether 
the  mocking  mirth  of  Mansfield's  Peer  Gynt  or 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  225 

the  lovely  mirth  of  Warfield's  Music  Master 
and  Jefferson's  Rip,  or  the  brittle,  icy  mirth  of 
Mrs.  Fiske's  Becky  Sharp  —  is  the  most  difficult 
thing  to  indicate  on  the  stage.  Don't  put  too 
much  stock  in  the  "  great  future  "  of  the  young 
actress  who  makes  you  weep  as  she  goes  sob- 
bing from  the  room  or  pounds  her  head  on  the 
floor.  Anybody  can  do  that,  even  without 
Belasco's  instruction.  But  watch  the  man  or 
woman  who  can  let  a  gleam  of  laughter  sparkle 
through  a  performance,  not  by  virtue  of  the 
comic  situations  but  by  virtue  of  a  truthful 
sense  of  character  and  the  skill  to  express  it. 
He,  or  she,  is  doing  the  real  thing. 

Another  common  error  in  the  judgment  of 
acting  is  the  failure  to  discriminate  between 
a  "  sympathetic  "  and  an  "  unsympathetic  " 
role.  It  is  perfectly  safe  to  assume  —  and  ethi- 
cally no  doubt  this  is  as  it  should  be  —  that  had 
Jefferson's  Rip  seemed  as  big  a  rogue  as  he  un- 
doubtedly was,  the  public  would  never  have 
acclaimed  him  with  such  enthusiasm,  though 
Jefferson's  acting  might  have  been  technically 
just  as  fine.  Warfield's  old  Music  Master  owes 
half  its  popularity  to  its  inherent  sweetness,  not 
to  the  sweetness  nor  the  skill  the  actor  puts  into 
it.  Let  Warfield  portray  a  villain  with  equal 
art,  and  watch  the  result.  Mansfield's  Baron 
Chevrial  brought  him  great  critical  fame  as  a 
piece  of  acting,  but  what  he  acidly  called  ''sweet 


226  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

parts  "  brought  him  vastly  more  popularity  and 
profit.  Such  is  the  public  attitude,  and  coming 
down  to  ordinary  plays  and  ordinary  players, 
we  find  that  an  equal  display  of  technical  pro- 
ficiency in  two  parts,  one  appealing  to  the  sym- 
pathy of  an  audience,  one  going  against  sym- 
pathy, will  in  almost  every  case  not  seem  equal 
to  the  public.  The  actor  of  the  sympathetic 
role  will  carry  off  the  lion's  share  of  the  credit. 
The  actors  themselves  know  this,  which  is  why 
sometimes  they  are  so  impatient  of  criticism. 
That  is  why  the  poor  authors,  too,  must  make 
their  leading  characters  sympathetic.  The 
stars  will  not  play  them  otherwise.  Just  what 
gives  one  part  sympathy  and  takes  it  away  from 
another  is  not  alw^ays  easy  to  say,  outside  of 
the  world  of  conventional  melodrama,  where 
all  parts  are  cut  to  traditional  pattern.  But, 
save  in  such  remarkable  exceptions  as  Mr. 
Galsworthy's  "  Strife,"  we  all  do  take  sides  at 
the  theatre,  and  the  actors  portraying  the  char- 
acters we  are  for,  as  it  were,  have  a  tremendous 
advantage  in  winning  our  favor. 

We  have  all  seen  many  a  play  containing  a 
cad  become  hopelessly  false  because  the  actor 
playing  the  cad  had  not  the  skill  to  make  the 
part  real  and  vital;  he  could  not  fight  against 
the  unconscious  antagonism  of  the  audience. 
We  have  seen  other  actors  fight  against  this 
antagonism  with  every  weapon  they  possessed, 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  227 

and  by  making  the  cad  human,  a  true  character, 
not  a  lay  villain,  enabled  the  play  to  triumph. 
Yet  it  is  but  rarely  such  players  get  the  credit 
they  deserve.  Too  often  the  honors  go  to  some 
player  in  a  sympathetic  role,  who  very  likely 
displayed  far  less  technical  proficiency,  who 
conquered  not  by  artistry  but  by  the  grace  of 
the  playwright. 

After  all,  in  the  end  the  right  judgment  of 
acting  comes  down  to  a  question  of  our  ability, 
when  we  sit  in  the  playhouse,  to  separate  the 
part  from  the  impersonation.  This  ability  is 
none  too  common  even  among  professional 
critics.  One  of  William  Winter's  great  merits 
was  his  possession  of  it.  To  judge  whether  an 
impersonation  is  correct  necessitates  a  knowl- 
edge of  what  the  part  implies ;  to  tell  whether 
an  actor  is  doing  what  he  should  do,  it  is 
necessary  to  know  what  he  should  do.  In  the 
elder  days,  when  many  plays  v/ere  enacted  over 
and  over  again  by  various  competing  players, 
it  was  easy,  by  a  process  of  comparison,  for 
nearly  anyone  to  gain  a  conception  of  the  pos- 
sibilities of  a  part.  The  public  had  a  pretty 
definite  standard  for  the  interpretation  of 
Hamlet,  Macbeth,  Juliet,  Viola,  Malvolio,  Sir 
Peter  Teazle,  and  a  hundred  other  famous 
roles.  So  to-day,  when  a  classic  is  revived  at 
the  New  Theatre,  comments  on  the  acting  are 
more  intelligent    (and  less   favorable  !)    than 


228  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

when  a  new  play  is  produced.  But  mostly  now 
we  witness  a  procession  of  new  parts  in  new 
plays,  and  comparison  is  out  of  the  question, 
save  for  the  fortunate  few  who  may  chance  to 
have  seen  the  English  or  Continental  produc- 
tion of  an  imported  work.  To  separate  the  im- 
personation before  us  from  the  part  becomes 
wholly  a  matter  of  imagination.  Perhaps  that 
is  why  so  few  of  us  do  it. 

What,  we  must  ask,  did  the  author  intend  this 
part  to  express?  Deciding  that,  we  act  it  for 
ourselves,  before  the  mind's  eye,  and  secure  a 
comparison  with  the  actual  performance.  So, 
though  the  impersonation  on  the  stage  may  be 
quite  charming  and  though  it  may  please  the 
public  very  much,  we  can  conceivably  state  that 
it  is  not  good  acting.  This,  for  the  professional 
critic,  is  the  only  proper  proceeding,  though 
not,  alas !  always  the  popular  one.  In  the  open- 
ing act  of  "  What  Every  Woman  Knows,"  for 
example,  Miss  Maude  Adams,  most  popular  of 
players,  acts,  if  not  badly,  at  least  incorrectly. 
wShe  strives  by  every  little  trick  at  her  command 
—  and  they  are  many  —  to  be  charming;  and 
the  part  distinctly  calls  for  a  complete  absence 
of  charm.  Awareness  of  Maggie's  charm 
should  come  gradually,  no  less  to  the  audience 
than  to  John  Shand.  A  large  conception  of  the 
role  of  Maggie,  which  saw  it  firmly  in  relation 
to  the  entire  play,  would  bring  about  quite  a 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  229 

different  impersonation  in  this  early  act,  and 
a  better  one.  But  Miss  Adams  has  a  witchery 
about  her  which  makes  it  doubly  difficult  to 
visualize  a  character  which  she  is  playing,  apart 
from  her  impersonation.  It  is  doubly  difficult 
to  convict  her  of  error  before  the  jury  of  the 
public. 

And  hers  is  only  one  of  many  cases.  Until 
a  role  becomes  common  property  and  compari- 
sons are  possible,  public  judgment  of  the  acting 
in  it  is  likely  to  err,  and  public  favorites  are 
likely  to  be  encouraged  in  the  exploitation  of 
their  personal  graces  and  idiosyncrasies  at  the 
expense  of  the  drama.  In  such  a  semi-public  in- 
stitution as  the  New  Theatre  it  would  not  be  a 
bad  idea  to  allow  the  actors,  from  time  to  time, 
to  alternate  in  each  other's  roles.  Both  the 
players  and  the  public  would  learn  much  from 
such  a  proceeding. 

The  great  actors  —  Mansfield,  Irving,  Booth, 
Coquelin,  Garrick,  and  the  rest  —  it  may  now 
be  admitted,  prove  an  exception  to  the  rule  that 
the  character  part  is  the  easier  to  play.  The  ul- 
timate test  of  great  acting  is  something  more 
than  correctness  in  execution  of  the  author's 
design.  Great  acting  must  bring  a  sense  of  life 
so  sharp  that  the  illusion  is  complete,  that  the 
auditor  is  self -forgetful,  that  his  emotions  are 
roused,  his  imagination  kindled,  his  whole  being 
expanded  in  glorious  response.    And  it  is  most 


230  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

often  the  character  part  which  has  the  sharp- 
ness of  outHne,  the  bigness  and  strangeness, 
the  sense  of  something  beyond  our  daily  aver- 
age, to  bring  such  effects  about.  So,  if  the 
small  actor  is  quite  sufficient  to  play  a  small 
character  part,  it  is  the  great  actor  who  is 
needed  to  play  a  great  character  part.  The 
straight  part  has  its  distinct  limitations.  They 
are  the  limitations  of  the  average  man  or 
woman  down  in  the  orchestra  stalls.  To  reach 
those  limits,  contrary  to  accepted  belief,  tech- 
nical skill,  a  fine  grade  of  acting,  is  required  of 
the  player,  the  more  because,  as  in  playing  the 
music  of  Mozart,  the  slightest  slip  is  detected. 
But  greatness  lies  beyond  those  limits,  and 
poetry  and  mystery.  These  are  furnished  not 
by  the  average  but  the  exceptional,  by  the 
character  part. 

Whether  as  Peer  Gynt  or  Beau  Brummell  or 
Ivan  the  Terrible  or  Richard  the  Third,  Mans- 
field towered  before  us  in  character  parts.  We 
remember  Irving  as  Mathias,  as  Shylock,  as 
Macbeth.  We  recall  Coquelin  as  Cyrano  or 
Tartuffe.  The  puJjlic  is  quite  right  in  its  hear- 
tier response  to  such  impersonations,  and  in  its 
feeling  that  the  actor  who  walks  season  after 
season  through  roles  which  show  him  only  in 
the  mild  and  ordinary  relations  of  this  world, 
almost  in  his  proper  person,  is  a  much  smaller 
artist,  even  admitting  that  it  requires  great 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  231 

technical  skill  to  impersonate  so  much  as  one- 
self respectably.  But  there  is  as  much  differ- 
ence between  the  art  required  to  impersonate 
Peer  Gynt  and  the  art  required  to  impersonate 
Trotter,  that  amusing  character  part  in  "  The 
Climbers,"  as  there  is  difference  in  calibre  be- 
tween the  two  men.  It  is  one  thing  to  play  the 
drunken  Lord  Algy,  quite  another  to  play 
Falstaff'.  If  character  parts  are  the  easiest  of 
all  to  play,  so  are  they  the  most  difficult.  The 
measure  of  the  character  is  the  measure  of  the 
art. 

Perhaps  that  is  as  useful  as  any  single  test 
we  can  apply  to  the  judgment  of  acting.  The 
measure  of  the  character  is  the  measure  of  the 
art.  But  to  take  the  measure  of  a  character 
presented  to  us  for  the  first  time,  it  is  necessary 
to  consider  the  play,  dispassionately  and  quite 
apart  from  the  impersonation,  by  an  act  of  the 
imagination.  Properly  to  judge  acting,  prop- 
erly to  give  it  emotional  response,  we  must  free 
ourselves  first  of  emotion,  we  must  judge  of 
dramatic  construction.  Probably  it  is  the  ina- 
bility of  so  many  people  to  go  behind  the  im- 
personation into  the  workshop  that  is  respon- 
sible for  most  of  the  injudicious  comments  we 
hear  upon  the  players'  art. 


232  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

GREAT   ACTING  AND   THE   MODERN 
DRAMA 

The  greatest  influence  on  opera  during  the 
nineteenth  century  was  exerted  by  Richard 
Wagner;  the  greatest  influence  on  drama  by 
Henrik  Ibsen.  Both  men  worked,  in  a  sense, 
for  the  same  end,  the  one  for  musical  truth, 
for  the  perfect  correspondence  of  score  and 
text,  the  other  for  dramatic  truth,  for  the  per- 
fect correspondence  of  incident  and  character. 
Opera  since  Wagner  has  continued  to  demand 
of  its  interpreters  the  finest  musical  talent,  and 
a  degree  of  dramatic  skill  undreamed  of  in  the 
days  of  Handel,  Mozart,  or  even  the  early 
Verdi.  But  the  drama  since  Ibsen,  on  the  con- 
trary, seems  to  demand  ever  less  of  its  inter- 
preters, until  at  the  present  time  great  acting, 
even  moving  acting,  is  rare  on  our  stage,  and 
on  all  sides  we  hear  the  shrill  complaint, 
"  There  are  no  great  actors  any  more." 

What  is  the  reason  for  this? 

Perhaps  there  is  no  single  reason  sufficient 
completely  to  explain  the  fact.  But  there  is 
one  reason  that  stands  up  above  the  others, 
and  that,  in  a  measure,  may  be  said  to  include 
some  of  the  others.  It  is  a  simple  reason,  too. 
Great  actors  can  only  be  made  by  training  in 
great  parts;  great  acting  can  only  be  felt  and 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  233 

yielded  to  when  its  spell  is  put  forth  in  great 
roles.  There  are,  practically,  no  great  parts 
in  modern  drama.  We  have  no  great  actors 
apparent  in  the  new  generation  of  players  be- 
cause we  have  no  training  school  for  them; 
we  see  no  great  acting  because  we  see  no  great 
parts  performed.  Milton  could  not  have  been 
Miltonic  on  a  lesser  theme  than  the  fall  of 
the  Angels! 

The  condition  of  opera  was  improved  by 
Wagner  because  the  base  of  opera  is  music, 
and  that  base  remains  through  every  change 
of  emphasis  or  style,  in  text  or  interpretation. 
It  is  no  less  the  base  of  Strauss's  "  Salome  " 
(in  spite  of  certain  critics!)  than  of  Mozart's 
"  Magic  Flute."  Every  step  toward  a  closer 
correspondence  of  score  and  text,  toward  the 
elimination  of  "  costume  concerts "  and  the 
substitution  of  significant  acting,  was  yet  taken 
on  this  base  of  music.  Ultimately,  as  much 
to-day  as  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  the 
appeal  of  opera  is  a  musical  appeal;  it  is  to 
the  sensuous  ear,  however  much  it  may  now 
be  re-enforced  by  an  appeal  to  the  intelligence. 
Once  opera  required  singers  to  interpret  it; 
now-  it  requires  singing  actors.  But  the  song 
element  remains  the  basic  one. 

In  the  drama,  however,  the  sure  base  of  a 
sensuous  charm,  or  essentially  poetic  appeal, 
does  not  inevitably  exist.    In  certain  kinds  of 


234  AT    THE    NEW    THEx\TRE 

drama  it  is  found  to  a  large  degree;    in  cer- 
tain other  kinds  it  is  not  found  at  all.    One  of 
the  latter  kinds  is,  as  a  rule,  the  modern  prose 
drama  of  contemporary  life.     Ibsen  and  the 
modern  dramatists  have  worked  to  make  inci- 
dent and  character  correspond,   to  eliminate 
artificiality  of  plot  and  the  "  situations  "  which 
are  devised  arbitrarily  because  the  actor  must 
have  his  chance  to  shine,  not  because  the  char- 
acter the  actor  is  playing  would  naturally  bring 
such   situations  about  or   is   significantly   af- 
fected by  them.     These  "  situations  "   corre- 
sponded to  the  arias  and  coloratura  passages 
of  the  older  operas.    One  of  Modjeska's  great 
performances  was  of  Adrienne  Lecouvreur,  a 
part  that  was  set  in  a  drama  as  preposterous 
as  any  of  the  older  operas,  and,  unless  greatly 
played,  as  incapable  of  giving  pleasure  as  is 
the  mad  scene  in  ''  Lucia  "  when  not  greatly 
sung.     In  the  stern  elimination  of  any  but 
truthful,  logical,  and  significant  situations,  in 
the  stern  suppression  of  "  emotional  scenes  " 
for  their  own  sake,  when  such  scenes  do  not 
arise  naturally  from  the  character  and  explain 
the  intellectual  message  of  the  play,  Ibsen  and 
the  modern  dramatists  have  forged  a  technique 
which  is  capable  of  setting  forth  contemporary 
life  on  the  stage  as  truthfully  and  plausibly 
as  in  a  novel,  of  teaching  by  inference  an  ethi- 
cal or  political  or  even  philosophic  lesson,  of 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  235 

making  the  drama  seem  in  the  eyes  of  think- 
ine  men  and  women  a  more  serious  and  im- 
portant  thing  than  it  has  been,  in  Enghsh,  at 
least,  for  more  than  a  century. 

And  in  doing  this,  the  dramatists  have  done 
well.  But  they  have  inevitably  done  it  at  a 
tremendous  sacrifice.  The  size  of  this  sacri- 
fice is  measured  by  the  difference  between 
Charlotte  Cushman  and  Maude  Adams,  be- 
tween Edwin  Booth  and  William  Faversham. 
They  have  done  it  at  the  sacrifice  of  great 
acting. 

And  that  is  because  the  modern  prose  drama 
of  contemporary  life,  in  throwing  over  the  old 
absurdities  of  plot  and  incident,  the  old  pack 
of  situations  devised  to  put  the  player  into  a 
state  of  emotional  frenzy,  by  placing  the  em- 
phasis on  the  intellectual  drift  of  the  drama 
and  its  truth  as  a  picture  or  lesson,  has  thrown 
over  poetry  as  well,  and  great  characters. 
Many  of  the  old  dramas  had  no  real  poetry 
and  many  of  their  ''  great "  characters  were 
not  great  at  all,  but  merely  went  through  the 
motions  of  greatness.  ''  Virginius "  is  not 
great,  and  certainly  is  not  poetry,  though  van- 
ished giants  of  the  stage,  such  as  Macready 
and  Forrest,  achieved,  we  are  told,  astonish- 
ing emotional  results  in  it.  Richelieu  is  not 
a  great  character,  but  one  so  placed  in  a  tricky 
melodrama  that  a  great  player  can  make  him 


236  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

seem  so.  Mr.  Sothern  in  this  part  does  not 
satisfy  the  older  critics,  who  once  saw  Booth's 
magnificent  Cardinal.  But  Mr.  Sothern's  very- 
failings  show  the  real  weakness  of  the  char- 
acter. But  there  were  poetic  dramas  in  the 
past,  and  there  were  great  characters  set  upon 
the  stage  and  engaged  in  doing  great  deeds, 
even  outside  the  works  of  Shakespeare.  It  is 
because  the  modern  dramatists  have  found  no 
poetry  and  no  greatness  in  modern  life  that 
they  have  lost  such  a  firm  base  as  that  upon 
which  opera  still  rests ;  and,  as  a  consequence, 
great  acting  seems  to  have  perished  for  want 
of  a  soil  to  grow  in. 

Ibsen  himself  created  two  poetic  plays,  con- 
taining two  characters  of  such  range  and  depth 
as  to  deserve  the  adjective  great —  "  Brand" 
and  "  Peer  Gynt."  But  as  he  developed,  as  his 
plays  became  closer  pictures  and  more  direct 
commentaries  on  his  day  and  generation,  his 
characters  shrank,  at  times  almost  into  mean- 
ness. It  requires,  of  course,  a  sure  technique 
and  very  genuine  talent  to  play  Hedda 
Gabler.  But  no  genius  was  ever  so  flaming 
as  to  make  that  character  great  —  nor  would 
it  then  be  Hedda  Gabler!  It  requires  a  touch 
of  eerie  poetry  to  play  *'  The  Lady  from  the 
Sea  "  —  but  no  genius  was  ever  so  flaming 
as  to  remove  from  her  the  taint  of  nerves,  the 
modern  blight.    The  most  effective  of  Pinero's 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  237 

characters  is  probably  Paula  Tanqueray.  She 
has  been  played  in  all  European  languages  by 
the  finest  actresses  of  recent  years.  But, 
played  by  the  best  of  them,  Paula  remains  a 
study ;  pitied,  perhaps,  at  times ;  observed  with 
interest  always;  but  always  essentially  small, 
mean,  a  trifle  cheap.  Mr.  Jones  has  never 
created  a  great  character.  In  his  most  poig- 
nant moments,  as  in  the  third  act  of  "  The 
Hypocrites,"  he  gets  his  largeness  of  effect  by 
carefully  wrought  suspense  —  a  perfectly  legit- 
imate dramatic  effect,  but  one  that  does  not 
require  supreme,  or  even  great,  acting  to  illu- 
mine. Mr.  Barrie  is  the  wisest,  the  most 
nearly  poetic,  the  most  charming  of  present 
authors  writing  for  the  English-speaking 
stage.  And  yet  Mr.  Barrie  has  never  created 
a  great  character.  Occasionally  he  has  come 
perilously  near  it ;  "  Peter  Pan "  trails  a 
shadow  of  the  things  that  never  die.  Mr. 
Barrie,  it  will  be  noted,  least  literally  renders 
life  about  him,  works  most  from  the  inner 
vision.  That  is  why  he  is  most  nearly  a  poet, 
lays  hold  on  the  things  that  are  most  lasting, 
comes  closest  to  resting  his  work  on  a  firm 
basis  of  enduring  charm.  But,  though  whim- 
sical and  sound,  he  is  surely  not  ample.  He 
misses  the  sheer  size  we  demand  of  greatness. 
Of  recent  successful  plays  in  America,  the 
one  which  has  been  most  popular  of  all,  which 


238  AT    THE    NEW    .THEATRE 

has  giv^n  the  widest  scope  for  acting  of  a 
purely  virtuoso  sort  and  for  emotional  response 
from  an  audience,  is  "  The  Music  Master." 
And  that  play  is,  curiously,  the  least  modern 
in  content,  the  most  old-fashioned  and  far- 
away from  the  new  spirit  in  drama.  It  is  a 
"one  part"  play;  it  is  a  series  of  arias  and 
emotional  coloratura  passages  for  David  War- 
field.  Yet  it  has  swept  the  entire  country, 
by  virtue  of  just  that  fact  —  because  it  does 
give  an  opportunity  for  ample  acting,  which 
is  amply  met  by  the  player.  It  has  shown  that 
we  do  not  want  acting  to  be  a  lost  art.  The 
"  Witching  Hour,"  however,  has  no  great  part, 
hence  no  opportunity  for  ample  acting;  it  suc- 
ceeds by  its  intellectual  message.  "  The  Lion 
and  the  Mouse  "  had  no  great  part ;  it  suc- 
ceeded because  of  its  political  drift.  "  The 
Great  Divide  "  and  the  same  author's  new  play, 
**  The  Faith  Healer,"  tremble  on  the  verge  of 
poetry  if  not  greatness.  To  suggest  convinc- 
ingly the  soul  struggle  of  the  former  play 
surely  requires  a  capacity  for  poetry  in  the 
players,  and  must  react  to  their  development. 
To  suggest  the  inner  fire  and  force  of  "  The 
Faith  Healer  "  does  surely  require  a  touch  of 
greatness  of  the  actor  essaying  the  role.  The 
character  is  no  mere  Kentucky  gambler  of 
"The  Witching  Hour":  he  is  a  Savonarola 
of  the  Plains.     But  Mr.  Moody,  the  author  of 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  239 

these  plays,  has  previously  been  known  as  a 
poet,  and  though  now  working  in  prose,  obvi- 
ously he  is  working  more  from  an  inner  vision 
than  a  photographer's  sense. 

Farce  and  frivolity  the  stage  has  always  had, 
and  always  will.  We  need  not  consider  that 
now.  Some  of  our  vanished  giants  appeared 
in  rubbish.  William  Warren  played  parts  in 
his  day  which  George  M.  Cohan  would  have 
blushed  to  devise,  and  Garrick  was  not  always 
great.  But  a  careful  consideration  of  the  seri- 
ously inclined  plays  of  the  present  generation 
in  America  or  elsewhere,  cannot  fail  to  show 
that  what  we  have  gained  over  the  past  in 
truthful  reflection  on  the  stage  of  actual  life 
about  us  we  have  lost  in  the  majesty  of  the 
characters  depicted,  in  the  depth  and  intensity 
of  the  emotions  portrayed.  And  consequently 
our  players  have  lost  the  force  and  sweep  and 
power  the  older  actors  were  obliged  to  develop 
to  play  the  older  parts.  Charlotte  Cushman's 
"  Lady  Macbeth "  had  an  emotional  appeal 
and  an  ample  sweep  of  imagination  incompar- 
ably greater  than  Maude  Adams's  "  Lady 
BalDbie,"  because  it  was  a  successful  embodi- 
ment of  a  vastly  greater  role.  But  it  would 
not  have  been  successful  had  Miss  Cushman 
been  trained  in  no  wider  nor  deeper  range  of 
parts  than  Miss  Adams  has.  Salvini's  per- 
formance in  "  La  Morte  Civile  "  was  tremen- 


240  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

dous  in  its  overpowering  emotional  effect.  The 
audiences  used  to  gasp  and  sob.  But  if  he, 
like  David  Warfield,  had  played  in  only  four 
dramas  in  his  entire  career,  or,  like  scores  of 
promising  actors  of  to-day,  had  never  had  a 
chance  to  play  a  big  part  in  his  life  —  a 
part  with  the  weight  of  poetry  behind  it  and 
varied  and  ample  emotional  expression  —  Sal- 
vini  would  never  have  torn  the  breasts  of  his 
audiences  as  he  did.  Indeed,  it  will  be  noted 
that  E.  H.  Sothern  did  not  attempt  "  Dun- 
dreary "  till  he  had  played  "  Hamlet."  Even 
for  sustained  comedy  a  severe  training  is  re- 
quired. And  it  will  be  noted  that  most  of  the 
players  on  our  stage  to-day  who  possess  power 
and  amplitude  —  Miss  Marlowe,  Mrs.  Fiske, 
Otis  Skinner,  for  example  —  have  had  long 
training  in  large  parts,  beginning  in  "  the  old 
school." 

But  all  this  does  not  mean  that  progress 
consists  in  going  backward.  It  does  not  mean 
that  the  way  for  a  modern  actor  to  demon- 
strate his  greatness  is  to  play  Virginius, 
or  for  an  actress  is  to  play  Adrienne.  It 
does  not  mean  that  the  way  for  a  modern 
playwright  to  create  great  opportunities  for  the 
players  is  to  devise  elaborate  emotional  arias 
for  them,  nor  that  the  way  for  him  to  be  poetic 
is  necessarily  to  twist  good  honest  prose  back 
end  foremost  into  blank  verse.     That  would 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  ^n 

mean  to  lose  all  that  the  drama  has.  toilfully 
gained ;  that  would  be  reversion,  not  progress. 

Some  of  the  modern  emphasis  in  stage  en- 
tertainment on  the  intellectual  message  of  the 
play  rather  than  the  emotional  effects  of  the 
actors,  is  doubtless  ephemeral,  a  passing  fash- 
ion. The  success  of  "  The  Music  Master " 
shows  that.  But  much  of  it  is  real  and  last- 
ing, and  a  great  gain.  Were  the  choice  be- 
tween "  King  Lear "  and,  let  us  say,  "  The 
Witching  Hour,"  who  would  hesitate  to 
choose?  But  it  isn't.  Shakespeare  does  not 
**  abide  our  question."  He  is  for  all  time,  for 
all  ages,  all  fashions,  like  Sophocles  and  Mo- 
liere.  Rather  is  the  choice  between  "  Vir- 
ginius,"  or  "  The  Iron  Chest,"  or  "  Adrienne 
Lecouvreur,"  or  "  Caste,"  and  "  The  Witching 
Hour."  And  shall  we  hesitate?  We  must 
keep  fast  hold  on  our  truthful  drama  of  con- 
temporary life,  with  its  intellectual  drift,  its 
"  criticism  of  life,"  its  message  to  the  head 
as  well  as  the  emotions.  Nobody  will  care  a 
hundred  years  hence  what  we  thought  about 
old  Rome  or  lands  of  mythical  romance.  But 
what  we  thought  about  the  problems  of  the 
hour  will  be  history. 

Progress  will  come,  the  restoration  of  great 
acting  and  of  poetry  will  come,  when  our 
modern  dramatists  discover  greatness  and 
poetry  in  contemporary  life,  when  the  repre- 


24f2  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

sentation  of  great  emotions  is  demanded  of 
the  actors  not  as  a  "  stunt  "  in  an  unimportant 
or  false  story,  but  as  a  logical  outcome  of  an 
important  and  truthful  story,  as  the  natural 
expression  of  great  men  and  women.  Nobody 
cares  much  to-day  —  and  who  can  be  blamed  ? 
—  about  the  emotions  of  old  Virginius  and  his 
impossible  offspring;  nor  can  anybody  raise  a 
tear  for  Adrienne  Lecouvreur  in  her  paste- 
board world.  But  some  of  us  could  care  very 
much  about  the  emotions  of  a  great  American 
in  the  face  of  a  great  modern  crisis.  We  hear 
of  tremendous,  fabulous  fortunes,  for  example, 
and  we  fancy  the  men  who  amassed  these  for- 
tunes must  be  men  of  power,  of  a  certain  kind 
of  greatness,  if  not  the  finest  kind,  if  not  of 
moral  greatness.  Yet  we  see  one  of  them  de- 
picted in  "  The  Lion  and  the  Mouse,"  wdth 
nothing  great  about  him.  The  author  has 
failed  to  grasp  his  opportunity.  There  was  a 
touch  of  sinister  greatness,  possibly,  about  the 
copper  king,  Samson,  in  M.  Bernstein's  play, 
but  in  America  we  saw  the  character  entrusted 
to  an  actor  who  had  never  in  his  life  played 
a  part  that  fitted  him  for  the  representation 
of  greatness,  and  the  effect  was,  for  us,  quite 
lost. 

Kipling  sighed  for  a  man  "  like  Bobbie 
Burns,  to  sing  the  song  o'  steam."  We  may 
well  sigh  for  a  dramatist  to  write  the  play  of 


AT    THE    new;    theatre  213 

steam,  or  of  electricity,  or  Wall  Street,  or  So- 
cialism, or  Labor  Unions,  or  the  increased  cost 
of  living.  Swinburne  died  recently,  and  we 
mourned  the  last  of  the  poets.  Irving  and 
Coquelin  died,  and  we  mourned  the  passing  of 
the  actors.  But  somehow  the  rest  of  us  go 
ahead  thinking  the  same  old  thoughts,  and 
feeling  the  same  old  thrilling  pangs,  and  doing, 
now  and  then,  the  same  old  brave,  foolish, 
ideal  deeds.  We  are  still  the  raw  material  of 
drama.     And  there  is  no  tariff. 

In  their  preoccupation  with  modern  people 
and  modern  problems,  then,  a  preoccupation 
inevitably  conditioned  by  the  change  in  dra- 
matic standards,  if  they  would  once  again  fer- 
tilize the  soil  for  great  acting  and  acting 
touched  with  the  glow  of  poetry,  the  drama- 
tists must  find  great  modern  people  to  depict, 
set  them  great  problems  to  wrestle  with,  and 
endow  their  lives  wath  an  inner  gleam  of  charm 
and  beauty.  It  is  not  enough  for  our  actors 
to  return  to  *'  the  classic  repertoire."  A  good 
deal  of  that  repertoire  the  new  generation  does 
not  want.  And  to  insist  that  our  actors  re- 
turn to  it  for  their  training  is  surely  to  crush 
out  present  and  future  playwrights,  to  block 
the  wheels  of  progress.  Great  acting  in  the 
future  must  be  developed  by  the  plays  of  the 
future.  And  already  there  are  hints  that  such 
acting  may  be  so  developed.     There  is  some- 


244  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

thing  epic  about  "  ^lagda."  There  was  noth- 
ing small  about  Mrs.  Fiske's  "  Tess."  Mr. 
Moody  has  stirred  the  breath  of  poetry  on  our 
stage  and  out  of  the  ample  places  brought  an 
ample  man.  What  our  stage  needs  is  play- 
wrights of  greater  and  nobler  imagination. 
What  our  actors  need  is  a  chance. 


A    PLEA    FOR   OPERETTA 

It  is  not  an  accident  that  there  is  no  grand 
opera  in  English  —  that  is,  opera  written  and 
composed  by  men  who  speak  the  English  lan- 
guage, not  grand  opera  translated  into  the 
English  tongue.  And  it  is  not  an  accident 
that  one  of  the  greatest  composers  of  operetta 
in  the  world.  Sir  Arthur  Sullivan,  was  an 
Englishman  (though  of  Irish  birth)  setting 
to  music  the  inimitable  English  librettos  of 
Gilbert,  and  that  the  chief  composer  in  Amer- 
ica to-day  who  writes  for  the  stage,  Victor 
Herbert,  writes  operettas.  Grand  opera,  so 
largely  and  expensively  produced  in  New 
York  and  also  in  other  American  cities,  is 
composed  by  foreigners  to  accompany  for- 
eign librettos,  conducted  by  foreigners,  and 
in  a  large  measure  sung  by  foreigners.  It 
is  not  native  to  us  nor  to  England;  it  thrives 
on   its   lavish    scale   largely   by   virtue   of   its 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  245 

social  aspect;  for,  great  as  our  acquired  in- 
terest is  in  grand  opera,  and  more  especially 
in  certain  grand  opera  singers,  it  could  not  be 
supported  in  its  present  magnificence  for  six 
weeks  without  the  social  backing.  Meanwhile, 
without  any  social  backing  whatever,  oper- 
ettas of  merit,  when  we  get  them,  and  musi- 
cal comedies  always,  pursue  their  way  in  the 
commercial  theatre,  despised  oftentimes  by 
the  critics  and  those  musically  learned,  but 
far  more  a  part  and  parcel  of  our  amusement 
life,  reflecting  far  more  our  tastes  and  habits, 
than  do  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House  pro- 
grams and  the  fare  until  recently  afforded 
at  Mr.  Hammerstein's. 

This  is  not  an  accident.  It  is  an  indication 
of  racial  traits.  It  should  teach  us  that  the 
cultivation  of  operetta  as  an  art  and  a  popular 
force  in  our  community  ought  not  to  be  left 
to  Vienna,  that  it  should  be  more  seriously 
regarded  here,  more  carefully  cultivated,  more 
worthily  performed.  The  creation  of  one 
American  operetta  like  Gilbert's  and  Sullivan's 
"  Patience,"  would  be  worth  a  dozen  importa- 
tions of  "  Madame  Butterflys  "  and  "  Toscas  " 
and  "  Salomes."  The  manager  who  should 
produce  it  would  deserve  far  more  credit,  and 
he  would  probably  gain  no  less  a  reward. 

Grand  opera  is  a  natural  speech  with  cer- 
tain races  —  as  natural  as  it  is  possible  for 


246  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

opera  to  be,  which  is  an  art  based  essentially 
on  an  unreality,  the  hypothesis  that  men  and 
women  sing  their  thoughts  and  feelings.  This 
is  notably  the  case  with  the  Italians,  in  whose 
grand  operas  far  more  than  in  their  lighter 
pieces  the  passions,  and  even  the  folk-tunes, 
of  the  people  find  expression.  It  is  true,  also, 
of  the  Russians,  in  whose  serious  music  of  all 
kinds  the  folk-tune  croons  unceasingly.  A 
German  grand  opera  like  "  Der  Freischiitz  '* 
of  Weber  is  national  music,  in  a  true  sense.  A 
Bohemian  opera  like  "  The  Bartered  Bride " 
rises  from  the  native  song  and  dance  with 
delightful  spontaneity.  The  French,  always 
master  craftsmen,  have  produced  both  light 
and  serious  opera,  and  both  excellently  well 
done;  and  neither,  perhaps,  quite  spontaneous. 
The  opera  bouffe  of  Offenbach,  Lecocq,  and 
Audran  followed,  after  all,  the  fairly  formal 
rules  of  a  "  school,"  and  in  the  serious  operas 
of  Massenet,  just  now  so  popular  in  New  York, 
correctness  is  more  noticeable  than  inspiration. 
But  England  and  Austria  have  found  their 
musical  expression  on  the  stage  almost  exclu- 
sively in  operettas.  Johann  Strauss,  the 
"waltz  king,"  was  also  king  of  operetta; 
then  there  was  Suppe,  of  "  Boccaccio "  and 
"  Poet  and  Peasant,"  and  but  lately  we  have 
heard  the  old,  heady  rhythms  again,  caught 
the  old  wine  and  sparkle  of  Viennese  life,  in 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  247 

"The  Merry  Widow"  of  Lehar  and  "The 
Chocolate  Soldier  "  of  Oscar  Strauss,  now  de- 
servedly popular  on  our  American  stage,  even 
if  its  libretto  is  a  travesty  of  Shaw's  "  Arms 
and  the  Man."  These  pieces  from  Vienna, 
musically  based  on  the  waltz,  are  as  truly  na- 
tional as  it  is  possible  for  stage  music  to  be  — 
they  are  as  national  as  they  are  delightful, 
and  because  they  are  so  sincere  their  tunes 
endure.  "  Die  Fledermaus  "  of  Johann  Strauss 
is  as  fresh  to-day  as  it  ever  was  —  vastly 
fresher  than  that  other  Strauss's  "  Salome  " 
will  be  fifty  years  hence. 

In  England  the  list  of  great  composers  is 
less  than  the  lists  of  other  nations.  But  Eng- 
land has  an  honorable  musical  history,  and 
once  was  far  in  advance  of  the  Continental 
world  in  musical  knowledge  and  skill.  John 
of  Forneste's  famous  six-part  glee,  "  Sumer 
is  a-cumin  in,"  composed  in  1230,  was  far  be- 
yond anything  on  the  Continent.  In  Eliza- 
beth's time  music  was  a  part  of  the  education 
of  every  English  gentleman,  the  musician  was 
held  in  high  regard,  and  the  English  ballads 
of  that  day  reached  a  high  point  of  perfection. 
Some  of  them  have  never,  for  fresh  simplicity 
and  for  sheer  magic  of  melody,  been  excelled 
in  any  land  at  any  time.  We  still  sing  "  Drink 
to  Me  only  with  Thine  Eyes,"  and  dozens 
more.     Then,  due  in  part  to  the  influence  of 


248  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

the  French  ballet,  in  part  to  Italian  musical 
influence,  came  the  English  masques.  But,  as 
Jonson  and  Milton  surpassed  the  French  ballet 
builders,  the  English  musicians  went  far  be- 
yond mere  Italian  finish  and  correctness.  The 
last  of  the  seventeenth-century  composers  and 
the  greatest  English  composer,  perhaps,  yet 
born,  was  Henry  Purcell.  Though  opera,  as 
we  understand  it,  was  then  in  its  infancy,  he 
developed  the  ballad  and  the  masque  till  he 
wrote  operas,  such  as  "  King  Arthur "  and 
"  Dido  and  ^neas,"  which  contained  passages 
of  great  dramatic  sincerity,  beauty,  and  power. 
But  with  the  eighteenth  century  English  music 
declined.  The  nation  still  demanded  its  native 
musical  expression  —  nations  always  will. 
This  was  supplied  by  piecing  together  on  a 
thread  of  spoken  plot  the  popular  ballads,  as 
in  the  case  of  "  The  Beggar's  Opera,"  with  a 
text  by  Gay.  English  music,  in  the  words  of 
Sir  Arthur  Sullivan,  "  was  thrown  into  the 
hands  of  the  illustrious  foreigners,  Handel, 
Haydn,  Spohr,  Mendelssohn  (so  long  the  fa- 
vorite composers  of  the  English)  and  of  the 
Italian  opera  which  exclusively  occupied  the 
attention  of  the  fashionable  classes,  and  like 
the  great  car  of  Juggernaut  overrode  and 
crushed  all  efforts  made  on  behalf  of  native 
music." 

It  was  significant  that  the  rebirth  of  Eng- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  249 

lish  music,  almost  two  centuries  after  the  death 
of  Purcell,  came  along  the  lines  in  which  it 
had  excelled  in  the  past  —  in  church  music  on 
the  one  hand,  of  which  Sir  Edward  Elgar  is 
the  present  leading-  composer,  and  in  popular 
music  on  the  other  hand;  not,  to  be  sure,  in 
ballads,  but  in  operetta  (which  is  far  nearer 
to  masque  than  grand  opera  is,  and  demands, 
like  the  masque,  a  native  text),  where  the 
songs  none  the  less  had  the  ballad  ring  and 
the  appeal  was  not  exotic,  not  to  any  fashion- 
able classes,  but  to  everybody,  to  the  sane, 
merrymaking  spirit  of  the  people.  This  side 
of  the  musical  rebirth  was  accomplished  by  the 
operettas  of  Gilbert  and  Sullivan.  They  oc- 
cupy in  the  history  of  British  music  as  impor- 
tant a  place  as  the  grand  operas  occupy  in  the 
musical  history  of  Italy.  They  show  the  natu- 
ral drift  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  temperament 
when  it  is  applied  to  musical  composition  for 
the  stage. 

Sullivan,  of  course,  did  not  invent  his  form. 
His  first  venture,  "  Cox  and  Box,"  was  directly 
suggested  and  inspired  by  Offenbach.  But  he 
consciously  wrought  into  his  work  the  spirit 
of  old  English  music  —  witness  the  song  of 
the  centurion  in  the  second  act  of  "  lolanthe  " 
—  and  he  set  to  music  English  librettos,  under- 
standable and  of  interest  to  contemporary  Eng- 
lishmen, happy  and  sane  and  blithe.     These 


250  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

operettas  raged  over  America  as  they  raged 
over  England.  For  every  person  who  heard 
and  enjoyed  grand  opera  in  a  foreign  tongue, 
ten  at  least  heard  and  enjoyed  "  Pinafore " 
and  "  Patience  "  and  "  The  Mikado."  Now, 
it  is  easy  to  say  that  those  operettas  were  not 
so  "  deep "  as  grand  opera,  nor  so  "  lofty." 
But  just  what  does  that  mean?  They  were 
musically  just  as  sound,  certainly.  They  had 
the  same  tonic  effect  on  musical  taste.  They 
did  not  stir  the  spectator  as  does  "  Don  Gio- 
vanni," or  Verdi's  "  Otello."  But  can  anyone 
in  honesty  say  that  they  did  not  possess  by 
their  gay,  honest  humor  a  greater  sincerity 
than  "  Lucia  di  Lammermoor,"  or  Massenet's 
*'  Herodiade  "  or  the  wearisome  bombasts  of 
Meyerbeer,  or,  yes,  even  this!  the  Teutonic 
outpourings  of  Wagner?  And  they  reached 
in  their  day  and  interested  and  influenced  a 
vastly  greater  number  of  people.  They  were 
native  and  near.  They  spoke  the  people's 
speech.  They  were  our  own.  It  seems  absurd 
to  suggest  that  they  need  any  defense.  Yet, 
in  the  eyes  of  a  good  many  people  to-day,  who 
rush  madly  to  hear  Italian  grand  opera,  oper- 
etta does  need  defense.  It  is  still  looked  down 
upon,  despised. 

Much  of  it,  of  course,  is  despicable  from  any 
careful,  artistic  standpoint,  for  in  lieu  of  real 
operetta  our  people,  hungry  for  native,  under- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  251 

standable  and  spontaneous  stage  entertainment 
with  the  accompaniment  of  music  and  rhythm, 
demand  what  we  call  musical  comedy.  The 
fact  that  at  least  one-third  of  the  theatrical 
productions  made  in  New  York  each  season 
are  musical  comedies,  however,  does  not  prove 
that  the  taste  of  the  people  is  vicious.  Rather 
it  proves  what  a  real  craving  exists  for  the 
pleasant  ministrations  of  music  and  rhythm, 
and  also  what  a  mighty  influence  the  com- 
posers and  librettists  of  operettas  might  exert. 
The  enormous  popularity  of  the  Gilbert  and 
Sullivan  productions  showed  that  the  better 
the  book  and  the  better  the  music,  provided  it 
was  real  operetta  music,  blithe  and  fluent,  the 
greater  the  patronage.  The  influence  of 
*'  Patience  "  proved,  indeed,  how  potent  oper- 
etta may  be  as  a  weapon  of  satire.  In  later 
years  the  success  of  George  Ade's  "  The  Sultan 
of  Sulu,"  though  accompanied  by  music  of 
little  charm  or  significance,  proved  how  keen 
a  desire  there  really  is  for  librettos  which  bite, 
which  have  wit  and  point,  and  make  ironic 
comment  on  the  affairs  of  the  hour.  Still  more 
recently  the  whirlwind  triumph  of  "  The 
Merry  Widow "  showed  that  the  interest  in 
Sullivan  was  not  a  flash  in  the  pan,  that  music 
with  real  melody  and  charm  and  grace  is  at 
all  times  more  desired  than  the  musical  mon- 
strosities of  a  G.  M.  Cohan.    Musical  comedy, 


252  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

as  we  call  it,  exists  because  the  instinctive 
popular  demand  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  public  is 
not  for  grand  opera  —  which  is  an  exotic  with 
us  —  but  for  appropriately  blithe  and  spark- 
ling music  wedded  to  a  comic  or  satirical  text. 
Just  as  the  "  ballad  operas  "  existed  alongside 
of  the  imported  music  in  England  in  1730,  so 
to-day  in  New  York,  side  by  side  with  Ger- 
man, French  and  Italian  grand  opera  in  two 
huge  opera  houses,  half  a  dozen  musical  come- 
dies constantly  flourish,  new  ones  replacing  the 
old  incessantly. 

And  they  would  exist  just  the  same  if  the 
entire  public  were  as  musically  "  educated  "  as 
the  most  eloquent  music  critic  desires.  A 
people  will  follow  their  natural  bent,  in  stage 
entertainments  as  elsewhere.  They  will  in- 
sist on  wanting  what  they  want  when  they 
want  it.  No  horseshoe  of  diamonds  or  fashion, 
no  golden  voiced  Caruso,  no  blare  and  sob  of 
a  mighty  orchestra,  can  compensate  for  the 
pleasure  which  comes  from  a  complete  under- 
standing of  the  text,  from  a  sympathy  with 
the  national  point  of  view  of  the  play,  from 
the  tang  of  reality  about  it,  the  fun  and  the 
sparkle  and  the  sting.  The  rhythmic  sense 
and  the  love  of  melody,  which  are  part  of  even 
our  Anglo-Saxon  natures,  demand  satisfaction 
in  the  theatre.  But  they  demand  satisfaction 
through  natural  channels.    Grand  opera  is  not 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  253 

such  a  channel.  There  is  no  grand  opera 
which  is  not  exotic  to  Enghsh-speaking  people. 
Operetta  is  such  a  channel.  And  when  we 
cannot  get  the  best,  we  take  second  or  third 
rate  musical  plays  rather  than  none  at  all. 

The  lesson  of  all  this  is  that  if  the  heedless 
patrons  of  musical  comedy  need  a  more  de- 
veloped musical  taste,  so  do  the  patrons  of 
grand  opera  and  the  countless  symphony  con- 
certs. It  is  only  an  undeveloped  musical  taste 
which  can  sneer  at  Sullivan,  or  the  composer 
of  "  The  Merry  Widow,"  or  Strauss  of  "  The 
Chocolate  Soldier,"  or  Victor  Herbert  of 
"Babes  in  Toyland "  and  "The  Red  Mill." 
To  the  credit  of  that  abused  and  despised 
creature,  the  American  theatre-goer,  even  the 
Tired  Business  Man,  be  it  said  they  are  not 
the  ones  who  sneer!  When  the  public  can  get 
a  Sullivan  or  a  Strauss  or  a  Victor  Herbert, 
time  and  again  it  has  been  proved  that  the 
public  prefers  these  real  musicians  to  the  tune- 
carpenters.  What  has  put  the  composition  of 
musical  comedy  in  England  and  America  so 
largely  into  the  hands  of  the  mere  tune-car- 
penters, the  one-fingered  composers  of  rag- 
time, is  the  attitude  of  the  more  musically 
educated  classes,  the  worshipers  of  foreign 
grand  opera,  the  people  who  think  a  dull  sym- 
phony, just  because  it  is  a  symphony,  is  by 
some  mystic  law  thereby  infinitely  better  music 


254  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

than  the  most  inspired  waltz  or  such  a  pas- 
sage of  sly  musical  delineation  and  captivating 
melody  as  the  mock  description  of  Nanki  Poo's 
death  in  "  The  Mikado  "  or  the  letter  song  in 
'*  The  Chocolate  Soldier."  This  attitude  has 
turned  our  native  musicians  away  from  what 
might  be  a  natural  expression  of  their  talents 
and  often  caused  them  to  break  their  hearts 
over  unproduced  grand  operas  or  unappreci- 
ated symphonies,  when  they  might  be  doing  a 
vastly  more  useful  work  setting  to  appropriate 
rhythm  and  melody  the  American  Sense  of 
Humor. 

For,  after  all,  if  grand  opera  is  an  exotic 
to  us,  this  is  in  no  small  part  due,  surely,  to 
our  sense  of  humor.  The  Saxon  imagination 
has  a  hard  wall  of  reality  about  it,  which 
accounts  for  our  emotional  reticence.  It  cannot 
quite  follow  grand  opera,  because  for  stage  ex- 
pression in  concrete  terms  of  the  more  serious 
passions  it  demands  the  realism  of  pure  drama. 
We  love  —  especially  our  women  folks  —  to 
fancy  we  are  wallowing  in  emotional  respon- 
siveness to  those  sobbing  fiddles  and  sighing 
voices.  But,  really,  our  heads  are  always  a 
little  in  the  way  of  our  hearts.  It  is  never 
for  us  quite  natural  and  convincing.  In  oper- 
etta, however,  our  heads  consent  to  keep  out 
of  the  way.  Here  our  love  of  rhythm  and 
melody  can  be  satisfied  to  the  full  and  we  do 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  255 

not  take  our  pleasures  sadly  but  gayly,  while 
the  incidents  of  the  hour  are  lightly  touched 
upon  by  the  text.  And  to  the  pleasure  of 
music  is  added  the  pleasure  of  something  na- 
tive, something  peculiarly  our  own,  the  pleas- 
ure, too,  of  seeing  ourselves  and  others  made 
fun  of. 

Gilbert  was  an  ideal  librettist  not  only  be- 
cause he  was  a  skilled  comic  dramatist  and  a 
brilliant  satirist,  as  in  "  Pinafore,"  but  because 
in  his  lyric  passages  he  possessed  a  verbal  felic- 
ity and  varied  rhythmic  scheme  which  were  of 
incalculable  aid  to  the  composer.  Sullivan  him- 
self has  told  how  he  always  chose  the  rhythm 
of  a  passage  before  he  composed  the  melody, 
and  insisted  on  the  importance  of  rhythm. 
Read,  if  you  have  the  courage,  the  lyrics  in 
any  Broadway  musical  comedy,  and  see  if  you 
can  fancy  even  Mozart  getting  out  of  them 
any  but  the  most  hackneyed  rhythms.  This 
is  but  one  indication  of  the  harm  that  has  been 
done  by  the  general  contempt  cast  upon  mu- 
sical comedy  by  the  musically  ''  enlightened." 
Musical  comedy  cannot  at  present  enlist  the 
services  of  musical  composers  powerful  and 
intelligent  enough  to  insist  upon  better  lyrics 
and  closer  cooperation  between  composer  and 
librettist,  nor  upon  librettists  intelligent  enough, 
as  a  rule,  to  train  themselves  in  varied  versi- 
fication.    Again  and  again  Victor  Herbert's 


256  AT    THE    NE\y    THEATRE 

scores  have  suffered  from  the  lack  of  coopera- 
tion and  from  the  poverty  of  inspiration  in 
the  material  he  was  called  to  set  to  music. 

But  this  could  be  altered  by  the  right  coop- 
eration of  the  right  men,  and  the  public  which 
now  flocks  to  second-rate  pieces,  because  it 
must  have  some  musical  comedies,  would  flock 
in  even  greater  numbers  to  native  operettas, 
even  as  it  flocked  to  "  Pinafore  "  and  "  Robin 
Hood"  and  "The  Merry  Widow."  Clyde 
Fitch,  who,  in  his  lighter  plays,  handled  con- 
temporary life  with  extraordinary  felicity, 
might  conceivably  have  written  librettos  of 
great  charm  and  wit  had  the  medium  seemed 
to  him  more  dignified  and  could  he  have  been 
assured  the  cooperation  of  a  first-rate  com- 
poser. Like  the  "  ballad  opera  "  of  1730,  our 
musical  comedies  of  to-day  are  popular  songs 
strung  on  dialogue — only  now  the  songs  are 
not  "  Sally  in  Our  Alley  "  and  "  Drink  to  Me 
only  with  Thine  Eyes,"  but  "  I  Love  My  Wife, 
but  oh  You  Kid!  "  and  "  Bill  Simmons."  Are 
these  songs  the  best  ballads  our  native  com- 
posers can  write?  Far  from  it!  One  can 
hardly  conceive  the  exquisite,  melancholy 
genius  of  MacDowell  in  the  popular  theatre. 
But  we  have  a  score,  at  least,  of  song  writers 
in  America  who  could,  in  cooperation  with  a 
dramatist  of  wit  and  fancy,  and  we  possess 
them,  too!   put  forth  operettas  of  musical  dis- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  257 

tinction,  popular  appeal  and  substantial  charm. 
What  is  needed  to  bring  this  about  is  not  a 
greater  education  of  the  people,  but  a  more 
catholic  education  of  the  musically  elect,  so 
that  they  shall  realize  the  true  importance  of 
operetta  and  musical  comedy,  its  national  sig- 
nificance, and  no  longer  sneer  at  the  composer 
who  writes  it. 

The  drama  in  recent  years  in  America  has 
been  creeping  closer  to  contemporary  life,  till 
to-day  we  have  a  dozen  native  writers  for  the 
stage  who  know  their  trade  and  can  depend 
on  a  public.  We  no  longer  go  to  Europe  for 
the  bulk  of  our  plays.  We  have  the  material 
and  the  workmen  to  create  native  librettos. 
Musically,  also,  America  has  made  vast  strides 
in  recent  years,  and  now  our  native  composers 
are  no  longer  scorned  at  home  and  are  no 
longer,  either,  without  technical  skill  to  match 
their  aspirations.  Why  should  not  these  two, 
playwrights  and  composers,  join  forces  to  cre- 
ate real  musical  stage  works  in  the  native  idiom 
—  which  is  operetta  or  musical  comedy  —  that 
would  appeal  to  all  classes,  widen  the  appre- 
ciation of  good  music,  give  substantial  pleasure, 
and  help  to  increase  the  charm  and  dignity  of 
the  American  stage?  Grand  opera  is  foreign, 
and  we  apparently  want  to  keep  it  so.  We  will 
not  submit  to  hearing  it  translated  into  Eng- 
lish, let  alone  listening  to  it  when  it  is  com- 


258  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

posed  by  men  of  our  race.  Our  musicians  are 
doing  themselves  and  us  no  good  when  they 
strain  after  this  exotic  fruit  and  leave  the 
native  garden  just  without  their  door  unhus- 
banded.  The  book  and  score  of  an  American 
"  Patience "  would  do  more  for  music  in 
America  than  a  wilderness  of  grand  operatic 
attempts,  because  such  a  work  would  be  native 
and  natural,  the  spontaneous  expression  of  our 
people. 

THE  DRAMATIST  AS  MAN  OF 
LETTERS 

THE  CASE  OF  CLYDE  FITCH 

To  take  Clyde  Fitch  seriously  always  sur- 
prised many  serious  people.  To  take  the 
theatre  seriously  always  surprises  many  serious 
people,  for  that  matter  —  the  theatre,  that  is, 
not  of  the  printed  page,  not  of  the  so-called 
*'  literary  drama,"  but  the  actual  playhouse, 
where  farces  and  musical  comedies,  vaudeville 
and  moving  pictures,  trivialities  of  all  sorts, 
jostle  with  Shakespeare  and  Ibsen  in  the  long 
effort  to  amuse.  Now,  Clyde  Fitch  was  a 
man  of  that  actual  playhouse;  his  plays, 
though  several  of  them  have  found  their  way 
into  type,  were  designed  for  the  footlights  with 
no  thought  of  type  in  mind.    They  were  almost 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  259 

as  much  "  produced  "  as  written,  for  Mr.  Fitch 
was  his  own  alert  stage  manager  and  shaped 
his  pieces  in  rehearsal.  They  were,  most  of 
them,  frankly  wrought  to  amuse,  to  entertain 
an  audience  in  the  playhouse,  to  bring  the  im- 
mediate returns  of  popularity  and  patronage. 
They  were  neither  conceived  nor  considered  as 
literature  in  the  conventional  sense.  Mr.  Fitch 
was  perfectly  willing  to  be  a  dramatic  tailor, 
to  cut  a  part  to  the  measure  of  a  star,  to  adapt 
from  the  French  or  German,  to  "  dramatize  '* 
novels.  Mostly,  he  may  fairly  be  said  to  have 
been  concerned  not  so  much  with  weaving  a 
fabric  as  cutting  a  garment;  mostly  he 
wrought,  it  seemed  to  his  critics,  not  so  much 
from  a  central  idea,  from  an  impulse  of  self- 
expression,  as  from  a  purely  theatrical  impulse 
to  "  shape  up  "  an  entertaining  story.  He  be- 
longed to  Broadway,  not  the  library  or  the 
class  room.  How,  then,  shall  he  be  considered 
seriously,  in  the  formal  sense,  and  his  work 
regarded  as  of  literary  importance? 

It  cannot  be  so  regarded  unless  the  critic 
is  willing  to  make  certain  concessions.  But 
neither  can  the  stage  work  of  men  much  more 
highly  esteemed  in  literary  circles  than  Clyde 
Fitch,  the  work,  even,  of  some  acknowledged 
masters  of  literary  form.  "  Peter  Pan,"  by 
J.  M.  Barrie,  would  make  a  poor  showing  in 
print.     Yet  is  it  less  worthy  work  than  "  The 


260  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Little  White  Bird,"  his  prose  fantasy  between 
covers,  out  of  which  it  grew?  A  Hterary  critic 
recently  wrote  of  John  Galsworthy's  "  Plays  " : 

'*  While  we  are  all  aware  that  plays  fre- 
quently get  themselves  printed  in  book  form, 
we  have  very  generally  come  to  regard  this  as 
a  mysterious  and  purely  conventional  activity 
of  the  publishers.  But  —  and  the  fact  is  of 
some  moment  —  Mr.  Galsworthy's  plays  are 
actually  readable.  They  are  not  of  the  stage, 
stagey.  They  have  literary  form,  fictional  in- 
terest, and  human  appeal.  ...  It  would  al- 
most seem  as  though  Mr.  Galsworthy  had  re- 
discovered the  underground  passage  between 
literature  and  the  stage." 

This  paragraph  is  more  or  less  typical  of  the 
literary  critic's  attitude  toward  the  drama  re- 
garded as  literature.  It  shows  clearly  the  con- 
cession which  must  be  made,  not  only  in  the 
case  of  Mr.  Fitch's  work,  but  in  that  of  many 
another  dramatist.  The  critic  applies  to  the 
printed  play  the  same  tests  he  applies  to  the 
novel  or  story,  and  finds  "  the  underground 
passage  between  literature  and  the  stage  "  only 
when  the  dialogue  is  sufficiently  embellished, 
the  characters  reduced  to  cold  type  sufficiently 
plausible,  the  situations  sufficiently  interesting 
or  poignant,  robbed  of  the  living  pulse  of  in- 
terpretation by  actors  and  actresses.  Now,  the 
novel  or  story  is  written  to  be  read,  and  what 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  261 

it  does  in  type  is  all  it  can  do.  The  drama  is 
not  even  written;  it  is  constructed.  And  it  is 
constructed  to  be  acted  in  a  theatre  by  living 
men  and  women,  with  illusive  scenery,  artifi- 
cial lights  manipulated  at  will,  the  tang  of 
actuality  about  it,  and  the  mood  of  it  created 
for  the  spectator  by  a  thousand  aids  which 
have  no  connection  with  the  printed  page, 
which  can  and  do  escape  the  reckoning  of  the 
literary  critic.  Its  characters,  impersonated  by 
good  actors,  may  conceivably  say  things  of 
stinging  humor  or  pathos  which  in  cold  type 
will  look  trivial  and  mean.  Its  situations, 
which  may  conceivably  seem  stiff  and  formal 
on  the  printed  page,  by  their  very  formality 
may  rise  steadily  to  a  thrilling  climax  in  the 
theatre,  where  the  interest  of  the  audience  is 
held  by  the  eye  and  the  ear  and  led  on  from 
one  moment  to  the  next,  step  by  step,  so  that 
a  formal,  mathematical  precision  of  incident 
is  frequently  an  aid,  not  a  blemish. 

Unless  it  is  drama  written  frankly  for  lit- 
erary effect,  as  modern  blank  verse  drama 
always  is,  its  dialogue  is  the  more  effective  the 
closer  it  approximates  the  inelegant  speech  of 
daily  life,  the  closer  it  fits  the  characters  who 
speak  it,  not  as  we  visualize  and  exalt  them 
in  type  but  as  they  walk  before  us  in  concrete 
form.  No  small  part  of  the  charm,  the  literary 
distinction  of  Maurice  Hewlett's  "  Open  Coun- 


262  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

try,"  is  in  the  rhapsodic  outpourings  of  Sen- 
house,  which,  on  the  printed  page,  carry  you 
irresistibly  along.  But  in  an  acted  drama  one 
dreads  to  think  of  their  fate,  unless  they  were 
condensed,  made  more  colloquial,  robbed,  in 
short,  of  what  is  now  their  grace  of  style. 
Again,  addressed  as  the  drama  is  so  much  to 
the  eye,  its  finest  passages  are  often  impossible 
of  reproduction  in  type.  Can  you  get  into 
print  the  final  moments  of  "  Shore  Acres," 
when  old  Nat  Berry,  played  so  beautifully  by 
James  A.  Heme,  climbs  the  stairs  with  his 
candle,  and  then  the  empty  kitchen  glows 
silently  in  the  fire-light,  like  a  benediction,  be- 
fore the  curtain  glides  down  ?  Can  you  repro- 
duce the  scene  when  Barbara  Frietchie  climbs 
the  stairs  in  Mr.  Fitch's  play?  Can  you,  in- 
deed, reproduce  a  thousand  and  one  poignant 
dramatic  situations,  carefully  planned  by  the 
dramatist,  when  pantomime  and  silence  get  the 
mood  and  meaning  across  the  footlights? 

It  is  obvious,  then,  that  what  is  most  efifective 
in  the  theatre  need  not  be  most  efifective  in 
type,  and  what  is  the  literature  of  the  pro- 
scenium frame  need  not  be  the  literature  of 
the  printed  page.  That  a  great  many  fine 
dramas  are  literature,  in  the  formal  sense, 
when  printed  —  Sophocles,  Shakespeare,  Mo- 
liere,  Sheridan,  Ibsen  —  does  not  prove  that 
a  great  many  fine  dramas  are  not.    At  best,  it 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  263 

proves,  perhaps,  that  the  finest  dramas  tran- 
scend the  theatre.  And  even  they  are  never 
quite  satisfactory  till  played,  never  quite  the 
same  things,  at  any  rate.  For  ordinary  pur- 
poses, what  is  or  is  not  literature  in  drama 
should  in  fairness  be  determined  by  the  play's 
effectiveness  and  truth  in  actual  presentation 
on  the  stage.  The  concession  which  the  critic 
must  make  is  this  —  he  must  learn  to  visualize 
the  printed  play  as  he  reads,  and  judge  it  as 
literature  by  its  stage  value.  He  must  under- 
stand that  it  is  but  the  skeleton  he  has  before 
him.  To  do  this  is  difficult,  but  not  impossible, 
the  more  as  most  printed  plays  have  been 
acted.  The  critic  of  music  would  not  dream 
of  judging  a  symphony  by  the  printed  score, 
unless  he  had  the  technical  ability  to  read  it 
into  sound. 

If  we  apply  this  test  to  the  work  of  Clyde 
Fitch  it  is  impossible  to  deny  it  a  place,  and 
an  important  place,  in  the  stage  literature  of 
America.  His  plays  were  never  concerned 
with  large  personages  nor  profound  passions. 
His  comments  on  the  pageant  of  social  life 
which  he  depicted  were  never  deep.  His  pre- 
occupation with  the  idea  of  successful  "  enter- 
tainment "  was  a  blemish  on  much  of  his  work- 
Nevertheless,  that  work  at  its  best  caught 
truthfully  the  surface  of  the  life  depicted  and 
occasionally,    with    a   kind   of   smiling   irony, 


264  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

plunged  down  below  the  crust;  it  was  made 
fascinating  by  a  boundless  observation  and  in- 
dividual by  the  touches  of  its  author's  sprightly 
fancy.  Never  stirring  profoundly  the  beholder, 
and  not  infrequently  annoying  him  by  its  petty, 
devices  of  villainy  to  bring  a  situation  about, 
it  was  yet  work  which  gave  much  pleasure  at 
the  moment,  was  freshly  and  vitally  contem- 
poraneous, and  has  counted  steadily  as  influ- 
ence in  the  American  theatre.  The  stage  litera- 
ture of  to-day  in  this  country  is  more  truthful, 
more  carefully  observed,  closer  to  life  and 
more  consistently  a  comment  upon  it  (for 
merely  to  observe  truthfully  is  to  comment) 
than  it  was  before  Mr.  Fitch  began  to  write. 
In  this  development  his  work  played  a  large 
and  important  part.  It  could  not  have  done 
so  had  it  not  been  truthful  work,  had  it  not 
been  dramatic  literature.  And  one  is  tempted 
to  add  it  could  not  have  done  so  had  it  been 
written  with  the  printed  page  in  mind.  It  is 
the  men  of  the  theatre  who  do  its  real  work. 

That  the  better  of  Mr.  Fitch's  plays  were 
a  comment  upon  life,  a  truthful  comment,  and 
hence  literature,  although  in  the  main  they 
were  designed  for  purposes  of  theatrical  en- 
tertainment, was  due  to  the  fact  that  his 
instinctive  respect  for  the  theatre  was  greater 
than  that  of  the  mere  theatrical  artificer  on 
the  one  hand  —  Sardou,  for  instance,  or  per- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  265 

haps  Henri  Bernstein  or  W.  Somerset  Maug- 
ham —  and  greater,  on  the  other  hand,  than 
that  of  the  usual  "  literary  dramatist,"  self- 
styled,  whom  Mr.  Fitch  probably  held  in  con- 
siderable contempt.  His  respect  for  the  the- 
atre was  so  great  that  he  saw  men  and  women 
in  the  world  about  him,  heard  conversations 
in  his  daily  rambles,  observed  incidents  and 
characters,  in  the  light  of  possible  stage  mate- 
rial. It  was  not  in  him  to  divorce  this  daily 
reality  from  the  theatre.  H  it  was  good 
enough  for  life,  it  was  not  too  good  for  the 
drama  nor  too  mean.  This,  when  you  come 
to  think  of  it,  is  a  high  respect.  And  his  re- 
spect for  the  theatre,  also,  was  such  that  his 
wish  was  to  appeal  to  its  habitual  audiences, 
to  catch  their  ear  and  win  their  favor.  For 
the  dramatic  cults,  the  associated  "  high 
brows,"  as  they  are  known  on  Broadway,  he 
cared  not  at  all.  That,  at  bottom,  the  desire 
for  pecuniary  gain  had  anything  to  do  with 
this,  all  who  knew  Mr.  Fitch  can  stoutly  deny. 
It  was  an  instinct  with  him.  It  led  him,  no 
doubt,  into  excesses  of  caricature  or  "  comic 
relief  "  which  marred  even  his  best  plays,  as 
"  The  Truth."  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  kept 
his  work  immediately  and  practically  effective 
and  enabled  him  to  exert  his  influence  along 
the  only  lines  that  were  for  him  potential. 
Because  he  respected  the  actual  theatre  too 


^66  AT    THE    NEW,    THEATRE 

much  to  give  it  less  than  reahty,  so  far  as  he 
could,  and  because  he  respected  the  actual 
theatre  too  much  to  withdraw  contemptuously 
from  its  verdicts,  he  made  the  actual  theatre 
a  better  place  within  his  own  too  brief  lifetime, 
he  helped  to  increase  critical  respect  for  it, 
and  to  refine  popular  appreciation. 

When  Mr.  Fitch  began  to  get  a  hearing  in 
the  theatre,  in  1890,  he  was  but  four  years 
out  of  Amherst  College.  He  came  on  with 
the  new  generation  who  had  been  born  too  late 
for  the  blank  verse  heroics  of  the  Victorian 
era  or  its  silly  farces,  sentimentalities,  and 
endless  adaptations  from  the  French  of  the 
school  of  Scribe.  It  was  incumbent  upon  the 
newer  dramatists  to  bend  the  prose  drama  into 
either  a  convincing  substitute  for  poetical  he- 
roics and  romance,  or  a  sufficiently  truthful 
picture  of  men  and  manners  to  answer  an  in- 
tellectual need.  Unconsciously,  perhaps,  they 
chose  the  latter  course.  Silly  plays,  tawdry 
arrangements  of  artificial  situations  and  shop- 
worn theatrical  "  passions  "  still  flourished  — 
and  still  flourish.  Doubtless  they  always  will. 
But  at  the  time  Mr.  Fitch  began  to  write,  in 
Germany,  France,  England  and  even  in  Amer- 
ica, there  were  signs  of  better  things.  Ibsen's 
"  Ghosts  "  was  produced  in  Berlin  at  the  Freie 
Biihne  in  1889,  at  the  Theatre  Libre  in  Paris 
in  1890,  by  the  Independent  Theatre  in  London 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  267 

in  1 891,  and  at  the  Berkeley  Lyceum  in  New 
York  in  1894.  Ibsen's  "  A  Doll's  House  "  was 
first  played  in  England,  however,  in  1889. 
This  performance  almost  immediately  followed 
the  production  of  Pinero's  "  The  Profligate," 
his  first  serious  drama.  Ibsen's  effect  there- 
after on  Jones  and  Pinero  was  considerable, 
even  if  they  had  got  on  the  track  of  what 
Mr.  Jones  sententiously  called  "  the  great  reali- 
ties of  modern  life  "  before  the  Norwegian  was 
heard  in  English.  What  William  Archer  calls 
'*  a  declaration  of  independence  from  French 
adaptations "  ensued  in  Great  Britain.  In 
America,  more  remote  from  the  whirlpool  of 
controversy,  the  declaration  of  independence 
was  slower  in  coming.  But  looking  back  over 
the  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century,  we 
remember  sharply  James  A.  Heme's  realistic 
dramas,  "  Shore  Acres,"  "  Sag  Harbor,"  and 
''  Griffith  Davenport,"  the  Civil  War  melo- 
jdramas  of  Bronson  Howard,  Belasco,  and 
Gillette,  the  "  state "  plays  of  Augustus 
Thomas,  and  Clyde  Fitch's  "  Nathan  Hale  " 
and  "  Barbara  Frietchie."  These  stand  out 
as  vividly  national  against  the  Zenda  romances 
then  raging.  They  did  seriously  and  more  or 
less  consciously  what  Harrigan  and  Hart  and 
Charles  Hoyt  were  doing  unconsciously  and 
farcically  —  using  American  material,  truth- 
fully observed,  for  purposes  of  drama. 


268  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

But  so  far  onl}^  one  of  these  men,  James  A. 
Heme,  had  gone  much  beyond  obvious  mate- 
rial. Probably  he  alone  was  fully  conscious 
of  the  stream  of  tendency  which  he  was  alike 
guiding  and  guided  by.  Mr.  Heme  died,  Mr. 
Howard  ceased  to  write,  Mr.  Gillette  faded 
into  a  more  or  less  innocuous  adapter  of  for- 
eign work.  Mr.  Thomas  has  only  in  the  past 
few  years  come  to  a  full  realization  of  what 
the  drama  means  to  him.  But  Clyde  Fitch, 
man  of  the  theatre  though  he  was,  cutter  of 
garments  to  the  order  of  any  star,  adapter  and 
collaborator  when  the  call  came,  in  his  numer- 
ically huge  output  continued  to  furnish  a 
steady  proportion  of  American  dramas,  truth- 
fully observed,  with  an  increasing  purpose  be- 
hind them  and  an  increasing  wealth  of  signifi- 
cant and  satirical  detail.  His  example  did 
more  than  any  other  single  influence  in  the 
American  Theatre  to  keep  the  on-coming 
dramatists  lined  up  to  the  new  standard  and 
the  new  ideal.  His  name  is  writ  large  as  a 
signer  of  the  American  drama's  declaration 
of  independence. 

In  the  score  of  years  during  which  he  wrote 
for  the  stage,  Mr.  Fitch  produced  thirty-three 
original  plays,  counting  as  two  plays  each 
shorter  dramas  later  rewritten,  and  twenty- 
three  "  dramatizations  "  of  novels  or  adapta- 
tions of  foreign  works.    He  left  behind  at  his 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  269 

death  three  additional  original  manuscripts 
and  two  adaptations.  It  has  been  for  years 
the  supposition  that  if  he  had  written  less  he 
would  have  written  better.  Probably,  how- 
ever, this  is  not  true.  He  had  a  "  bottled 
lightning  "  mind  and  little  power  of  reflection. 
Morev,ver,  invention,  the  greatest  difficulty  of 
play  writing,  was  easy  for  him,  the  labor  of 
constructing  a  plot  and  situations  less  than  for 
most  men.  He  wrote  as  his  nature  directed; 
and  it  is  rather  foolish  to  quarrel  with  any 
artist's  method  of  composition.  The  process 
of  adapting  a  play,  though  Mr.  Fitch,  as  in 
"  Girls,"  for  instance,  often  transformed  the 
original  into  a  new  thing  by  his  wealth  of 
characteristic  detail,  is  not  a  severe  mental 
strain.  Thirty-six  original  plays  in  twenty 
years  of  ardent  and  unceasing  toil  is  not,  per- 
haps, an  inordinate  number,  certainly  not  a 
record  number.  Shakespeare,  indeed,  wrote 
almost  as  many. 

And  of  these  original  plays  all  but  one  of 
them  written  since  1900  (and  that  one,  *'  The 
Toast  of  the  Town,"  was  made  over  from  an 
earlier  piece)  dealt  with  American  subjects, 
almost  all  with  contemporary  American  sub- 
jects, often  in  a  fresh,  vivid,  and  interesting 
manner.  With  increasing  sureness  the  major- 
ity of  them  gained  their  chief  interest  not  from 
the  old  tricks  of  plot  nor  the  old  virtuosity  of 


270  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

the  actors,  so  common  on  our  stage  a  genera- 
tion before,  but  from  the  essential  truth  of 
their  observation  of  contemporaneous  life  and 
manners. 

In  1901  Miss  Amelia  Bingham  produced 
"  The  Climbers,"  after  nearly  every  manager 
in  New  York  had  rejected  it  because,  they 
said,  ''  the  public  would  never  stand  for  the 
funeral  stuff  in  the  first  act."  How  little  the 
managers  understood  what  was  coming  to  be 
vital  in  drama  was  shown  by  the  result.  The 
public  "  stood  for  "  the  first  act,  quite  literally, 
three  deep  behind  the  last  row  of  seats,  be- 
cause they  recognized  its  deliciously  ironic  ob- 
servation. A  shallow  social  climber  and  her 
daughters,  in  funeral  mourning  for  a  father 
just  lost,  bargained  with  two  other  women  for 
the  sale  of  their  now  useless  wardrobes.  The 
scene  was  wickedly  acid,  for  all  its  humor,  and 
written  with  such  observation  of  feminine 
trickery  and  the  manners  of  a  certain  class  of 
society  that  it  was  irresistible.  The  play  went 
on  to  develop  the  tragedy  of  a  Wall  Street 
plunger  and  his  socially  aspiring  family  —  a 
sordid  tragedy  of  rather  sordid  and  trivial 
people.  But  it  was  theatrically  effective  and 
proved  anew  that  a  popular  play  could  be  made 
without  going  back  of  yesterday  nor  beyond 
New  York  for  the  material.  And  by  the  sa- 
lient  satire  of   its   surface   details   it   showed 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  £T1 

how  valuable  a  thing  for  the  dramatist  is  the 
observant  eye  —  the  eye  which  is  not  shut  as 
soon  as  the  author  quits  the  playhouse  but  is 
then  most  open,  gathering  material  not  from 
the  musty  store-room  of  stage  tradition  but 
from  the  streets  and  drawing-rooms. 

In  "  Barbara  Frietchie,"  produced  by  Miss 
Marlowe  in  1899  with  great  success,  Mr.  Fitch 
had  shown  in  the  minor  detail  of  stage  setting 
what  can  be  achieved  by  good  taste,  solidity 
and  truthfulness  of  setting,  how  in  the  con- 
temporary prose  drama  sharply  framed  by  a 
proscenium  arch  the  illusion  can  be  heightened 
by  attention  to  the  "  production."  Mr.  Be- 
lasco,  among  others,  was  already  working  on 
the  same  tack.  But  Mr.  Belasco's  attention 
to  the  "  production "  sometimes  results  in  a 
swamping  of  more  essential  things.  With  Mr. 
Fitch  the  setting  was  always  one  detail  of  a 
scheme  of  realism  which  reached  as  far  as 
his  plots,  and  only  there  broke  down.  In 
"Captain  Jinks  of  the  Horse  Marines"  (played 
by  Miss  Ethel  Barrymore  in  1901)  not  only 
the  stage  replica  of  the  old  Hotel  Brevoort  in 
New  York  during  its  palmy  days  and  the 
enormous  skirts  worn  by  the  ladies  gave  the 
proper  atmosphere,  but  the  rehearsal  of  the 
old-fashioned  ballet  dance,  the  old  ballet  mas- 
ter himself,  the  pervading  sense  of  a  smaller 
New  York  of  the  early  70' s  gone  mad  over  a 


272  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

pretty  singer,  after  the  fashion  of  our  fathers, 
created  an  illusion  historically  truthful. 

In  "  The  Stubbornness  of  Geraldine  "  (writ- 
ten for  Miss  Mary  Mannering  in  1902)  not 
only  was  the  illusion  of  a  pitching  steamer 
created  by  the  stage  carpenter  —  a  simple  trick 
of  no  importance  —  but  the  scene  on  the  deck 
was  filled  with  such  countless  delightful  strokes 
of  observation,  both  of  character  and  incident, 
that  no  printed  sketch  of  an  ocean  voyage 
could  have  caught  so  vividly  its  humors.  A 
gentle  ridicule  pervaded  this  scene,  but  ridicule 
which  resided  entirely  in  the  aptness  of  the 
characters  themselves  and  of  what  they  did. 
*'  The  Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes  "  (produced 
by  Mrs.  Bloodgood  in  1902)  was  a  play  of 
more  serious  mettle.  Here  Mr.  Fitch  set 
earnestly  to  work  at  last  to  study  a  character. 
But  he  could  not  forego  his  detail,  he  could 
not  keep  out  of  his  play  those  strokes  of  ob- 
servation. That  was  one  of  his  weaknesses; 
he  abused  his  virtues  by  overworking  them. 
The  scene  showing  the  Cook's  Tourists  before 
the  Apollo  Belvidere  was  capital  fun,  but 
hardly  belonged  in  this  serious  drama  of  jeal- 
ousy any  more  than  did  the  young  man  who 
was  incessantly  taking  pills. 

"  Her  Own  Way  "  and  "  Her  Great  Match," 
written  in  1903  and  1905  for  Miss  Maxine 
Elliott  (cut  to  order,  as  it  were),  on  the  other 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  273 

hand  justified  the  "  Fitchian  detail  "  —  already 
this  close  and  sprightly  observation  of  the  sur- 
face of  life  had  come  to  be  accepted  as  a  sort 
of  standard.  One  was  willing  to  pause  and 
watch  the  minor  characters  and  the  intimate 
details  of  the  story  which  were  so  vivid  a  part 
of  the  charm.  In  "  Glad  of  It "  (a  failure) 
Mr.  Fitch  endeavored  to  dramatize  a  depart- 
ment store,  which  was  at  least  daring.  In 
"  Girls,"  an  adaptation  from  the  German 
(1908),  he  shaped  the  original  so  much  into 
his  own  manner  that  it  became  practically  his 
play;  and  here  his  vivid  observation  of  surface 
detail  was  seen  at  its  best.  The  life  of  three 
bachelor  girls  in  a  New  York  flat  —  the  rat- 
tling of  water  in  the  steam  radiator,  the  sing- 
ing of  a  "  vocalist "  across  the  air-shaft,  the 
washing  of  handkerchiefs  in  a  bowl,  later 
spread  to  dry  on  the  window-pane,  the  sup- 
pers of  eclairs  and  chocolate,  the  rows  with 
the  janitor  —  that  was  its  substance,  and  that 
was  caught  with  such  smiling  assurance,  such 
deft  truth,  that  it  had  the  tang  of  actuality 
which  the  story  of  the  play  quite  missed,  and, 
slight  and  unimportant  as  the  little  piece  was 
it  made  you  dissatisfied  with  many  a  more  am- 
bitious drama,  dissatisfied  because  the  more 
ambitious  drama  lacked  this  surface  reality, 
this  sense  of  scenes  and  persons  lifted  out  of 
life  and  set  down  upon  the  stage.    A  truthful 


274  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

surface  texture,  indeed,  was  with  Mr.  Fitch  a 
matter  of  style,  and  ahnost  as  much  an  instinct 
as  personal  cleanliness. 

It  is  no  criticism  of  his  truth  as  an  artist 
to  say  that  his  people,  even  in  the  most  ambi- 
tious of  his  plays,  were  generally  small  people, 
engaged  in  somewhat  trivial  afifairs  and  mov- 
ing in  a  shallow  and  trivial  social  world.  So 
long  as  Mr.  Fitch  remained  true  to  the  types 
he  chose  to  depict,  and  among  whom,  it  must 
be  confessed,  he  seemed  to  move  with  the  most 
pleasure,  his  art  might  be  limited,  but  it  could 
not  be  called  false.  He  set  out  deliberately 
to  study  these  types  in  serious  drama  at  least 
twice,  to  put  aside  except  for  the  mere  pur- 
poses of  background  the  adroit  surface  detail, 
the  array  of  amusing  minor  personages,  the 
satirical  or  comic  little  interludes  which  he 
knew  so  well  how  to  transfer  from  the  avenue 
to  the  stage,  and  to  track  down  the  deeper 
spiritual  truths  of  character.  These  plays  were 
''  The  Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes  "  and  "  The 
Truth."  In  both  of  them  he  failed  of  com- 
plete success.  In  both  of  them  he  did  demon- 
strate that  he  was  not  fully  an  artist,  not, 
however,  because  he  chose  trivial  types  —  that 
was  his  right  —  but  because  he  could  not  re- 
main consistently  true  to  his  task  of  tracking 
them  down. 

The  trouble  in  "  The  Girl  with  the  Green 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  275 

Eyes  "  was  the  plot,  the  chain  of  circumstances 
which  revealed  the  character  of  Jinny,  the  jeal- 
ous wife.  Those  circumstances  were  largely 
external  to  her  character,  arbitrary  and  arti- 
ficial. Jinny  remains  true  to  herself  in  this 
play,  to  be  sure,  but  it  is  not  the  fate  of  most 
of  us  to  have  unmitigated  cads  for  younger 
brothers,  as  Jinny  had,  and  it  is  only  on  the 
stage,  perhaps,  that  a  husband  would  risk  his 
domestic  happiness  and  the  love  of  his  wife 
by  concealing  the  truth  about  her  abominable 
brother  under  the  mistaken  notion  that  his 
''  honor  "  compelled  him  to  keep  a  promise  to 
that  young  gentleman.  In  other  words,  Mr. 
Fitch  employed  not  the  simple  expedients 
which  are,  after  all,  sufficient  to  bring  jeal- 
ousy to  a  head  and  set  it  gnawing  at  character 
and  happiness,  but  a  highly  colored  and  arti- 
ficial —  and  rather  needlessly  unpleasant  —  set 
of  circumstances.  To  create  a  play  that  should 
excite,  he  depended  in  reality  more  on  plot 
than  on  character,  and  his  study  of  character 
suffered  accordingly.  It  seemed  less  typical, 
because  its  setting  was  not  typical  at  all,  did 
not  spring  from  the  character  but  the  arbi- 
trary will  of  the  dramatist.  This  is,  of  course, 
to  admit  that  Mr.  Fitch  was  here  too  much  a 
man  of  the  theatre,  and  not  free  from  the 
lingering  Scribe  conventions.  But  it  in  no 
wise  proves  that  he  was  not  an  artist  because 


276  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

the  jealous  Jinny,  instead  of  being  a  regal 
figure,  a  modern  Cleopatra,  perhaps,  was  a 
frail,  trivial,  commonplace,  every-day  sort  of 
female. 

"  The  Truth,"  unsuccessful  in  America, 
where  it  was  produced  by  Mrs.  Bloodgood  in 
October,  1906,  successful  in  London,  where 
Miss  Marie  Tempest  played  it  in  April,  1907, 
and  later  taking  a  place  in  the  repertoire  of 
several  Continental  theatres,  comes  the  nearest 
to  being  a  completely  satisfactory  drama  of 
all  Mr.  Fitch's  works.  For  two  acts,  indeed, 
it  has  hardly  a  flaw.  His  preoccupation  with 
amusing  detail  for  its  own  sake  has  vanished. 
Engaged  seriously  in  the  study  of  a  woman 
who,  paradoxically,  was  both  true  at  heart  and 
a  petty  liar  with  her  tongue,  involving  herself 
in  webs  of  deceit,  Mr.  Fitch  lays  his  prepara- 
tion for  the  final  inevitable  blow  to  her  hus- 
band's love  with  quiet  ease,  steady  progres- 
sion, and  convincing  naturalness.  Printed, 
these  acts  are  almost  as  engrossing  and  plau- 
sible as  on  the  stage.  They  must  satisfy  even 
the  "  literary  "  critic! 

And  then  once  more  Mr.  Fitch  is  beset  by 
his  virtues.  Enter  Becky's  father,  a  gambling, 
degenerate  old  rake,  and  the  serio-comic  land- 
lady from  Baltimore  with  whom  he  lives.  The 
scene  is  transferred  to  their  establishment,  and 
though  the   father  at  least  may  claim   some 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  277 

positive  dramatic  value  by  explaining  Becky's 
inherited  proclivities  to  prevaricate  (the  play- 
w^rights  would  be  hard  put  without  the  good 
old  law  of  heredity!),  the  key  of  the  drama  is 
appreciably  changed,  a  mood  perilously  close 
to  farce  creeps  in.  Mr.  Fitch  always  claimed 
living  originals  for  these  characters.  But  that 
does  not  strengthen  his  case  in  the  least. 
Comic  characters,  however  true,  distract  from 
the  mood  of  tragedy  or  of  serious  character 
study,  divert  the  attention,  and  so  are  false  to 
the  higher  purpose  of  the  play.  One  suspects 
that  in  Europe  these  two  characters  in  the 
presentation  were  "  toned  down,"  and  natu- 
rally in  Europe  it  was  not  their  comic  element 
of  truthful  caricature  which  stood  out,  but 
their  occasional  emotional  appeal.  That  may 
explain  the  greater  success  of  the  play  abroad. 
Being  superficially  less  realistic  there,  it  was 
at  bottom  more  so. 

Mr.  Fitch's  faults  in  these  two  serious  char- 
acter studies  of  his,  then,  were  the  faults  of 
his  virtues  —  his  preoccupation  with  the  desire 
to  make  a  story  for  his  play  that  should  in- 
terest the  large  general  public,  and  his  gift  of 
sprightly,  more  or  less  satiric,  observation, 
which  he  could  not  quite  keep  within  bounds, 
even  in  a  drama  of  grave  import.  He  was  too 
often  as  one  who  jested  in  a  sermon.  In  "  The 
Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes  "  he  missed  his  mark 


278  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

because  his  plot  was  artificial  and  did  not  fuse 
with  the  simple  reality  of  his  character  study. 
The  plot  exposed  the  character,  the  character 
did  not  condition  the  plot.  In  "  The  Truth  " 
he  missed  his  mark  because  he  could  not  keep 
to  the  one  mood  of  gravity,  and  lost  his  hold 
on  the  emotions  of  his  audience  by  losing  him- 
self in  the  comic  depiction  of  exaggerated  types 
quite  aside  from  his  main  issue.  In  "  The 
City,"  Mr.  Fitch's  last  play,  posthumously  pro- 
duced in  November,  1909,  and  plainly  lacking 
his  guiding  and  reshaping  hand  at  rehearsal, 
he  created  what  he  himself  is  said  to  have  re- 
garded as  his  finest  work.  It  is,  at  any  rate, 
his  most  masculine  work,  for  once  putting 
forth  a  man  as  the  chief  personage  and  seri- 
ously studying  him.  But  here  again  occurs 
the  paradox  —  his  virtue  is  his  fault.  His  play 
fails  of  his  higher  purpose  because  plot  and 
purpose  do  not  comport. 

*'  The  City  "  is,  supposedly,  an  exposition  of 
the  idea  that  New  York,  or,  for  that  matter, 
any  large  city,  "  shows  up  "  a  man  in  his  true 
colors,  brings  to  the  surface  his  keenest  am- 
bitions and  largest  interests,  so  that  if  those 
ambitions  and  interests  are  unworthy,  the  man 
comes  to  know  it,  and  the  world  comes  to  know 
it  also.  The  people  from  the  little  town  of 
Middleberg  in  Mr.  Fitch's  play  were  moral 
hypocrites,   as   their   father   had   been  before 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  279 

them.  It  was  not  till  they  satisfied  their  long- 
ings and  got  into  the  thick  of  affairs  in  New 
York  that  they  were  brought  to  realize  the 
fact,  however.  This  is  a  fresh  and  perhaps 
a  just  view  of  urban  influence.  But  the  play 
fails  of  making  it  clear  and  convincing,  be- 
cause Mr.  Fitch,  too  concerned  with  his  theat- 
rical story,  brought  about  the  revelation  of 
hypocrisy  to  the  hero  not  by  the  influence  of 
the  city  but  by  the  plotting  of  a  single  char- 
acter, the  degenerate  and  illegitimate  offspring 
of  the  country  father.  For  the  working  out 
of  that  long,  lurid,  and  theatrically  exciting 
second  act,  the  scene  of  the  story  need  really 
never  have  left  Middleberg.  Mr.  Fitch,  too 
intent  on  his  plot,  forgot  his  purpose.  His 
instinct  was  right.  It  was  a  virtue.  He  lacked 
the  genius,  however,  to  fuse  his  story  with  the 
exposition  of  character  and  the  development 
of  an  intellectual  idea.  Not  his  preoccupation 
with  petty  people  was  his  artistic  weakness  — 
though  it  may  have  been  his  moral  weakness 
—  but  his  lack  of  a  balanced  intellectual  judg- 
ment on  his  own  work,  of  a  sufficient  power 
of  concentration  on  one  mood  or  one  idea. 

Admitting  these,  his  limitations,  his  half- 
failures  and  incomplete  realizations,  we  must 
at  the  same  time  admit  his  positive  merits  and, 
striking  the  balance,  judge  him  as  one  whose 
contributions  to  stage  literature  possessed  con- 


280  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

siderable  truth  and  value  of  themselves,  and 
have  been  of  even  more  significance  as  influ- 
ence and  example.  In  the  long  array  of  his 
plays,  stretching  over  a  period  of  almost 
twenty  years,  will  be  found  a  varied  record 
of  the  foibles  and  fashions  of  the  hour,  the 
turns  of  speech  which  characterized  the  fleet- 
ing seasons,  our  little  local  ways  of  looking 
at  little  things,  the  popular  songs  we  were 
singing,  the  topics  which  were  uppermost  in 
our  social  chat,  our  taste  in  decoration,  our 
amusements,  the  deeper  interests,  even,  of  our 
leisured  classes;  and  always  a  portrait  gallery 
of  vividly  drawn  minor  characters  of  great 
historic  interest.  Supplement  the  texts  and 
stage  directions  of  Mr.  Fitch's  plays  with  a 
collection  of  flash-light  photographs  of  the 
original  productions,  to  picture  the  costumes 
and  settings  (a  collection  of  such  stage  photo- 
graphs would  be  of  great  value  to  any  histor- 
ical library),' and  they  will  afford  twenty,  fifty, 
a  hundred  years  hence  a  more  authentic  and 
vivid  record  of  our  American  life  from  1890 
to  1 9 10,  so  far  as  it  was  lived  in  the  gayer 
parts  of  town,  than  any  other  documents, 
whether  the  files  of  the  newspapers  or  the  fic- 
tion of  the  hour.  The  minute  and  faithful 
gift  of  observation  w^hich  was  his  gave  Mr. 
Fitch's  plays  at  once  their  most  immediate 
appeal  and  their  most  lasting  value.     Ruskin 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  281 

long  ago  pointed  out  that  the  only  "  historical 
painting  "  which  will  have  value  for  our  de- 
scendants is  our  record  of  our  own  times.  The 
same  is  true  of  drama.  Our  descendants  will 
not  care  what  we  thought  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution or  even  of  the  Civil  War.  But  what 
w^e  thought  of  our  own  immediate  surround- 
ings will  be  to  them  of  historic  interest  and 
worth.  They,  at  least,  will  be  glad  that  the 
best  of  Mr.  Fitch's  plays  have  been  preserved 
in  print. 

And  because  his  appeal  was  so  immediate, 
because  his  success,  due  to  his  keen  and 
sprightly  observation,  was  so  great,  his  influ- 
ence on  other  dramatists,  consciously  or  not 
was  far-reaching  and  for  good.  He  encour- 
aged a  more  subtle  and  painstaking  stage- 
management  —  a  reform  that  in  America  still 
has  a  long  way  to  go.  He  taught  the  value 
of  a  seemly  setting  for  a  play,  of  accuracy  and 
solidity  of  scenery.  He  encouraged  by  his 
success  the  choice  of  American  subjects  and 
the  stage  illustration  of  American  manners. 
When  he  began  to  write,  the  percentage  of 
native  American  dramas  in  a  single  season 
was  very  small,  and  the  characters  in  them 
were  often  native  only  in  name.  To-day  the 
percentage  of  native  dramas  produced  in  a 
given  year  far  exceeds  the  percentage  of  for- 
eign plays,  and  most  of  them  are  now  con- 


282  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

cerned  with  contemporary  themes  and  people 
with  characters  recognizably  American.  It  is 
impossible,  of  course,  to  estimate  Mr.  Fitch's 
share  in  this  result,  but  that  it  was  consider- 
ably more  than  that  of  any  other  single  man, 
no  one  familiar  with  American  theatrical  con- 
ditions can  doubt. 

A  man  of  the  actual  theatre,  with  the  fail- 
ings as  well  as  the  virtues  of  a  man  of  the 
theatre,  without  the  consciousness  of  a 
prophet's  call  nor  the  intellectual  assurance  of 
a  self-appointed  leader,  Clyde  Fitch  led  by  his 
practical  success  as  a  maker  of  popular  plays 
which  were  also  truthful  plays.  That  those 
plays  obeyed  the  tendency  of  the  times  and 
led  the  theatre  still  farther  from  poetry  and 
true  romance  there  is  no  question.  The  pen- 
dulum had  to  swing.  It  is  still  swinging.  The 
mission  of  the  theatre  to-day  is  to  give  re- 
flective realism  a  full  and  fair  trial.  So  far 
as  he  could,  Mr.  Fitch  instinctively  made  his 
plays  realistic,  he  commented  upon  the  life 
about  him  by  showing  it  on  the  stage  as  he 
saw  it,  often  through  the  glass  of  a  kindly 
irony.  Because  truth  always  makes  its  way 
when  it  is  not  dully  presented,  he  was  popu- 
larly successful  above  most  other  playwrights. 
They  studied  the  secrets  of  his  success  and 
wrote  better  plays  themselves.  The  public  — 
which  never  studies  —  felt  the  secrets  of  his 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  283 

success  and  demanded  better  plays.  A  man 
who  has  done  this  for  the  theatre  need  not 
fear  that  the  theatre  will  forget  him.  But 
to  deserve  so  well  of  the  theatre,  to  have  con- 
tributed so  much  to  stage  literature,  is  not  yet, 
in  popular  estimation,  to  have  become  a  man 
of  letters.  One  is  only  left  to  speculate 
whether,  after  all,  some  acknowledged  men  of 
letters  deserve  so  well  of  fame  for  any  con- 
tributions they  have  made  to  vital  truth  in 
art. 


WILLIAM   WINTER  — AN 
APPRECIATION 

In  the  month  of  August,  1909,  William 
Winter,  "  the  dean  of  American  dramatic 
critics,"  and  almost  the  last  link  between  the 
literary  America  of  the  mid-Victorian  epoch 
and  the  bustling  present,  resigned  his  post  on 
the  New  York  Tribune,  which  he  had  adorned 
for  almost  half  a  century  and  which  he  had 
filled  with  untiring  zeal  and  unflagging  de- 
votion to  what  he  deemed  the  best  ideals  of 
journalism. 

On  the  reasons  for  that  resignation  we 
need  not  touch  here.  A  point,  evidently,  was 
reached  where  modern  newspaper  policy  and 
Mr.    Winter's    policy    could    not    harmonize. 


284  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Speech  was  "  freer  "  in  the  old  days.  What 
concerns  us  at  present,  when  Mr.  Winter  has 
retired  from  active  service,  is  his  contribution 
to  American  criticism,  his  unique  position  to- 
day in  American  letters,  and  the  man  himself, 
as  he  has  appeared  for  so  long  on  "  first 
nights  "  in  New  York,  amid  glitteringly  jew- 
eled women  and  men  more  or  less  distin- 
guished, to  the  thoughtful  person  easily  the 
most  notable  figure  in  the  theatre  and  the 
most  interesting. 

As  those  of  us  who  belong  to  the  new  gen- 
eration recall  him  at  the  playhouse,  he  ap- 
peared an  old  man,  a  little  bowed  and  feeble, 
who  leaned  on  his  son's  arm  as  he  climbed 
the  aisle,  and  after  a  particularly  dull  or  triv- 
ial performance  looked  pathetically  weary. 
He  long  ago  laughingly  remarked  that  his 
constitution  was  gone  and  he  was  living  on 
the  by-laws.  His  hair  was  snowy  white  and 
so  was  his  mustache;  he  wore  no  beard.  His 
height  was  rather  less  than  the  average  and 
recently  seemed  still  shorter,  for  the  stoop. 
He  seldom  wore  evening  clothes  at  the  theatre, 
and  on  cold  or  stormy  nights  in  winter  a 
white  muffler  enveloped  him  to  the  ears,  some- 
times remaining  round  his  neck  through  the 
entire  performance.  His  seats  were  always 
well  to  the  front,  and  after  he  had  come  down 
the  aisle  on  his  son's  arm  he  would  sink  into 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  285 

the  chair,  settle  far  down  till  only  his  white 
head  was  visible,  and  remain  there  till  it  was 
time  to  leave  for  "down-town  "  and  the  grind 
of  copy  for  the  morning  Tribune.  Amid  the 
chattering  ranks  of  the  younger  critics,  the 
flashing  diamonds  and  low  necks  of  the 
women,  the  animated,  well-dressed  —  and 
overdressed  —  throng  at  a  New  York  first 
night,  this  frail,  white-haired  old  man,  with 
the  countenance  and  air  of  an  older  school 
of  American  manners,  seemed  almost  an 
anachronism. 

But  that  face,  and  particularly  the  eyes, 
gave  the  lie  to  his  bodily  frailty.  He  must 
always  have  had  the  face  of  a  scholar  and 
dreamer,  thin,  pale,  with  a  sensitive  mouth 
and  a  nose  chiseled  as  sharply  and  delicately 
as  a  statue,  which  age  made  the  more  beau- 
tiful. And  his  eyes,  when  they  woke  to  in- 
terest in  the  play,  burned  as  keenly  as  the 
youngest. 

In  his  latest  book  of  literary  reminiscence 
Mr.  Winter  tells  of  catching  Holmes  once  when 
the  genial  Autocrat  supposed  he  was  unob- 
served and  watching  his  face  change  from 
grave  to  gay  at  a  passing  thought. 

"  Much  can  be  learned,"  he  says,  "  if  you 
have  the  privilege  of  looking  at  a  great  man 
when  he  is  alone,  wrapt  in  thought." 

So,  once,  I  watched  Mr.  Winter  pass  out 


286  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

of  the  Garden  Theatre  during  the  last  act  of 
Mrs.  Campbell's  production  of  "  The  Joy  of 
Living,"  a  play  by  Sudermann  which  he 
strongly  condemned.  He  was  scowling  as  he 
entered  the  lobby  from  the  auditorium.  Then, 
suddenly,  he  laughed,  a  quiet,  chuckling  laugh, 
and  his  feeble  pace  quickened,  as  if  he  were 
impatient  to  get  to  his  copy  paper.  Always 
a  master  of  ironic  invective,  some  barbed  shaft 
of  wit  had  occurred  to  him  and  he  was  joy- 
ing over  it.  Indeed,  I  remember  that  criticism 
the  next  morning  as  one  of  his  most  brilliant 
and  witty,  though  my  own  judgment  of  the 
play  and  the  actress  was  passionately  in  their 
favor. 

He  took  always  this  pleasure  in  his  work; 
his  reviews  were  not  so  much  "  filler  "  for  the 
capacious  columns  of  the  Tribune  as  finished 
pieces  of  artistry  for  their  own  sake.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  many  of  them  were  not  written 
in  the  brief  hour  between  the  closing  of  the 
play  and  the  time  of  sending  the  paper  to 
press.  No  human  pen,  in  that  time,  could  have 
produced  the  columns  which  he  wrote  about 
Mansfield,  Booth,  Irving.  Much,  from  long 
experience,  he  was  able  to  prepare  beforehand, 
and  when  he  reached  the  office  of  his  news- 
paper —  dreading  elevators,  he  always  wrote 
on  the  ledge  of  the  counting-room  downstairs 
—  he  had  but  to  make  corrections  and  addi- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  28T 

tions  to  his  proofs.  He  could,  however,  write 
as  much  as  the  youngest  in  the  hurried  hour 
after  the  performance;  and  what  he  then 
wrote,  while  often  more  concise,  was  no  less 
polished  in  diction  and  illuminated  with  wit 
than  his  prepared  essays.  You  could  not 
hurry  him  to  the  point  of  loose  thought  or 
lax  English.  His  brain  was  too  quick  and 
keen,  his  mastery  of  style  too  sure.  And  the 
passion  of  his  reviews,  the  moral  earnestness, 
the  sheer  weight  of  their  rolling  sentences,  the 
richness  of  their  vocabulary,  adjectives  rally- 
ing in  battalions  to  support  a  noun,  the  inci- 
sive logic,  and  at  times  the  biting  sarcasm, 
made  what  he  wrote,  to  the  end,  as  much  more 
virile  than  the  writings  of  us  younger  chaps 
as  his  body  the  night  before  seemed  frailer. 

To  speak  in  the  past  tense  of  his  beautiful 
white  head  in  the  theatre  and  of  his  dignified, 
authoritative  reviews  in  the  Tribune  is  for 
one  of  us,  at  least,  a  saddening  task.  Doubt- 
less other  works  of  reminiscence  will  still  come 
from  his  pen;  but  even  by  those  who  most 
strongly  dissented  from  his  judgments  of 
dramas  —  thoughtful  people  could  much  less 
often  dissent  from  his  judgment  of  acting  — 
his  daily  reviews  of  the  New  York  stage  will 
be  sorely  missed.  He  was  needed,  and  his 
like  will  always  be  needed. 

His  dramatic  reviews   disclosed   a   curious 


288  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

blend  of  the  Puritan  and  the  sentimentaHst. 
WiUiam  Winter  was  a  Puritan  by  environ- 
ment, a  sentimentahst  by  nature  —  and  the 
two  went  hand  in  hand.  He  was  born  in 
Gloucester,  Massachusetts,  in  1836,  the  son 
of  a  sea-captain;  but  his  boyhood  years  were 
spent  in  Boston,  where  he  moved  amid  the 
stirring  events,  literary  and  political  and 
spiritual,  which  marked  the  period  of  Boston's 
golden  age  of  American  leadership.  It  is  hard 
for  us  of  to-day  to  understand  the  precocity 
of  the  youth  of  fifty  years  ago.  In  1854,  when 
he  was  only  eighteen  years  old,  Mr.  Winter's 
first  book  was  published  in  Boston.  It  brought 
him  some  recognition  and  appears  to  have 
opened  to  him  the  columns  of  the  Transcript. 
Nowadays  a  youth  of  eighteen  is  playing  foot- 
ball at  Andover  or  Exeter,  and  thinking  of 
Harvard  entrance  examinations,  not  publish- 
ing a  book.  At  this  time,  too,  Mr.  Winter 
won  the  lifelong  friendship  of  another  youth 
of  eighteen,  whose  first  book  had  just  been 
published  in  New  York.  This  lad  was  Thomas 
Bailey  Aldrich.  One  eighteen-year-old  poet 
wrote  nice  things  in  the  Transcript  about  the 
other  eighteen-year-old  poet,  and  the  friend- 
ship began.  Mr.  Winter  has  printed  some  of 
Aldrich's  letters  of  that  period.  They  are 
astonishingly  well  written,  witty,  keen,  enter- 
taining.   Our  expensively  educated  boys  to-day 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  289 

could  no  more  write  such  letters  than  they 
could  fly  —  rather  less,  indeed,  for  that  time- 
hallowed  comparison  is  now  obsolete!  These 
letters  are  also  sentimental,  which  would  not 
be  astonishing  in  any  boy  —  or  shall  we  say 
man  ?  —  of  eighteen,  save  Thomas  Bailey  Al- 
drich.  In  later  life  long  residence  in  Boston 
froze  that  side  of  him  from  the  world's  eye. 

Mr.  Winter,  at  eighteen,  however,  was  not 
yet  prepared  to  support  himself  by  literature, 
so  he  went  to  the  Harvard  Law  School.  There 
not  only  the  Puritan  peace  of  Cambridge  but 
the  Puritan  peace  of  Longfellow,  who  made 
a  friend  of  the  young  man,  must  have  had  a 
great  influence  upon  him.  On  graduation  he 
was  admitted  to  the  Suffolk  bar  and  even 
practiced  for  a  time.  He  also  took  the  stump 
for  the  antislavery  cause,  caught  up  by  the 
great  wave  of  Puritan  moral  passion  which 
was  then  sweeping  over  New  England.  Sum- 
ner and  Wendell  Phillips,  Theodore  Parker, 
and  even,  in  his  early  years,  Channing,  were 
men  to  whom  he  listened,  on  whose  ideals  of 
oratory  his  ideals  were  based,  by  whose  ideals 
of  liberty  and  virtue  his  Puritan  soul  was 
shaped.  He  could  no  more  have  escaped  the 
influence  of  this  environment  than  Emerson 
could  have  moved  away  from  Concord. 

But  he  was  also  a  sentimentalist.  A  man 
of  passionate  friendships  and  equally  passion- 


290  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

ate  dislikes,  a  hero-worshiper  of  Longfellow, 
poetry  was  one  of  his  loves  —  so  strong  a  one 
that  it  seemed  to  him  of  greater  interest  than 
politics  or  law  or  reform.  His  place,  by  tem- 
perament, was  in  speech  rather  than  action,  in 
literature  rather  than  life.  Perhaps,  too,  for 
all  his  Puritan  principles,  there  was  something 
in  him  that  protested  against  the  primness 
which  goes  with  the  Puritan,  and  against  the 
frigidity  and  aloofness  of  the  Boston  Chip- 
pendales, to  borrow  Judge  Grant's  now  in- 
dispensable name.  Mr.  Winter's  Gloucester 
captains  must  have  brought  some  sprig  of  vine- 
leaves  from  over  seas  and  put  it  in  his  hair. 
His  beloved  Longfellow  never  had  vine-leaves 
in  Jiis  hair.  Perish  the  thought!  And  though 
Walt  Whitman  later  said  of  Mr.  Winter, 
"  Willy,  he  's  a  young  Longfellow,"  —  which 
was  by  no  means  intended  as  a  compliment,  — 
the  "  young  Longfellow  "  left  Boston  in  1859, 
to  try  his  fortunes  in  New  York.  Nobody  can 
imagine  the  older  Longfellow  ever  leaving 
Cambridge  for  New  York  —  deserting  Brattle 
Street  for  Broadway. 

Once  in  New  York,  the  young  poet  aban- 
doned all  pretence  of  the  law,  which  could 
never  have  been  a  congenial  occupation  to  him, 
and  embarked  on  the  sea  of  journalism  and 
literature,  then  less  charted  than  now  and 
much  less  likely  to  lead  to  fortune.     He  cast 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  291 

in  his  lot  with  the  so-called  "  Bohemians  "  who 
used  to  gather  in  Pfaff's  restaurant,  on  Broad- 
way, near  Bleecker  Street,  and  got  his  first 
employment  as  subeditor  of  a  weekly  called 
the  Saturday  Reviczv,  edited  by  "  the  Prince 
of  Bohemia,"  Henry  Clapp,  Jr.,  a  brilliant, 
witty,  sarcastic  man,  who  aimed  to  tell  the 
truth  about  everybody  in  his  journal  and  had 
more  enemies  than  subscribers.  It  was  Clapp 
who  said  that  Horace  Greeley  was  "  a  self- 
made  man  who  worshiped  his  creator  " ;  and, 
when  his  paper  resumed  operations  after  a 
suspension  of  many  months,  he  printed  the  fol- 
lowing announcement : 

"This  paper  was  stopped  in  i860,  for  want  of 
means;  it  is  now  started  again,  for  the  same 
reason." 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  influence 
of  this  uncannily  clever  man  and  the  satirical 
tone  of  his  paper  developed  another  side  of  the 
young  recruit  from  Boston,  which,  if  Mr. 
Winter  had  stayed  in  Massachusetts  —  Long- 
fellow tried  to  buy  a  paper  for  him  in  Cam- 
bridge —  would  probably  have  remained  dor- 
mant. He  would  have  written  for  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  with  appropriately  proper  decorum, 
and  we  should  have  been  the  poorer  without 
his   scathing  wit,   applied   for   nearly  half  a 


292  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

century  to  correct  abuses  on  our  stage,  to  snuff 
out  upstart  players,  and  to  rebuke  a  present  too 
prone  to  forget  its  past. 

Fitz-James  O'Brien,  George  Arnold,  Thomas 
Bailey  Aldrich  and  Walt  Whitman  were  other 
members  of  the  "  Bohemians."  But  for  Whit- 
man Mr.  Winter  has  not  now,  and  seems  never 
to  have  had,  any  sympathy.  In  his  book,  "  Old 
Friends,"  he  records: 

"  He  did  not  impress  me  as  anything  other  than 
what  he  was  —  a  commonplace,  uncouth,  and  some- 
times obnoxiously  coarse  writer,  trying  to  be  origi- 
nal by  using  a  formless  style,  and  celebrating  the 
proletarians  who  make  the  world  almost  uninhabit- 
able by  their  vulgarity. 

"  In  those  Bohemian  days  I  participated  in  vari- 
ous talks  with  Walt  Whitman,  and  once  I  asked 
him  to  oblige  me  with  his  definition  of  '  the  poet.' 
His  answer  was : 

"  *  A  poet  is  a  maker.' 

"  '  But,  Walt,'  I  said,  '  what  does  he  make?  ' 

"  He  gazed  upon  me  for  a  moment  with  that 
bovine  air  of  omniscience  for  which  he  was  remark- 
able, and  then  he  said : 

"  '  He  makes  poems.'  " 

Mr.  Winter  adds  that  this  reply  was  deemed 
final.     Certainly  the  circle  was  completed! 

The  life  of  the  Saturday  Review  was  not 
long.     In   1S65  ^^^-  Winter  became  the  dra- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  293 

matic  critic  of  the  New  York  Tribune,  then 
edited  by  Horace  Greeley,  and  he  occupied  the 
post  from  that  date  until  1909.  For  many 
years  he  wielded  a  supreme  influence  among 
American  critics  of  the  drama;  and,  more  re- 
cently, after  the  spirit  of  the  times  had  drifted 
hopelessly  beyond  his  liking,  he  still  wrote  with 
undiminished  vigor  and  passion  in  defense  of 
his  earlier  ideals,  and  still  rebuked  all  other 
critics  of  the  drama  by  the  precision  of  his 
prose,  the  weight  of  his  convictions,  the  poetic 
glamour  of  his  descriptions  of  great  acting. 

From  that  time,  too,  his  literary  friends 
grew  more  numerous  and,  from  the  view-point 
of  the  present,  more  important.  They  included 
George  William  Curtis,  Bayard  Taylor,  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes,  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman, 
Richard  Henry  Stoddard,  Wilkie  Collins,  Don- 
ald G.  Mitchell,  and  Artemus  Ward.  But  it 
was  among  actors,  perhaps,  that  his  warmest 
friendships  lay.  He  was  the  intimate  friend 
and  adviser  of  Booth  and  Barrett,  of  Jefferson 
and  Irving,  of  Augustin  Daly  and  Miss  Rehan. 
That  he  wrote  about  them  made  no  differ- 
ence, as  perhaps  was  natural,  since  he  wrote 
in  praise! 

But,  after  all,  it  is  not  his  bond  of  friend- 
ship with  the  great  figures  in  our  literature 
and  on  our  stage  twenty-five  or  fifty  years  ago 
that  makes  him  most  significant  and  interest- 


294  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

ing.  It  is  the  fact  that,  as  a  critic  of  the 
drama,  he  wrote  about  a  fine  art,  finely.  So 
few  have  done  that  in  this  country,  so  few  are 
doing  it  to-day,  that  WilHam  Winter  stands 
almost  unique.  This  statement  is  not  intended 
as  disparagement  of  the  many  earnest  and  in- 
telligent men  who  are  writing  about  the  stage 
for  American  newspapers  to-day.  It  is  simply 
an  admission  that  Mr.  Winter  brought  to  the 
task  what  very  few  of  them  can  bring,  in  any 
such  degree  —  an  instinctive  knowledge  of  act- 
ing, widened  by  long  experience;  a  remark- 
ably logical  brain  in  controversy;  a  keen  wit, 
which  he  knew  how  to  employ  for  purposes  of 
emphasis,  not  self-exploitation;  the  rhetorical 
fluency  of  a  poet;  and  a  prose  style  which, 
though  fashioned  in  an  elder  day  and  bearing 
about  it  something  too  much  of  ponderous 
stateliness,  was  yet,  first  and  always,  a  style. 
A  great  many  writers  of  popular  books  do  not 
possess  a  style.  Still  fewer  newspaper  writers 
possess  one.  But  without  style  criticism  can- 
not become  literature,  any  more  than  a  "  best- 
seller "  can  become  literature;  criticism  cannot 
be  creative.  God  —  and  hard  practice  —  gave 
a  style  to  William  Winter;  and  for  forty-four 
years  he  employed  it  in  the  columns  of  a  news- 
paper for  the  service  of  the  American  stage. 
For  that  reason  some  of  his  reviews  have  a 
more  lasting  value   than  the  plays   they  de- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  295 

scribe.  "  Criticism,"  says  the  mob,  "  is  noth- 
ing but  a  picking  to  pieces."  So  it  is —  when 
written  by  Httle  critics.  In  the  hands  of  a 
large  man,  who  is  also  a  man  of  letters,  criti- 
cism may  become  creative,  may  gain  a  perma- 
nence of  form  to  make  it  literature.  Because 
it  frequently  became  so  in  the  hands  of  Wil- 
liam Winter,  his  place  in  the  history  of  the 
American  theatre  is  assured. 

Let  us  take  one  illustration  of  his  style.  It 
is  not  in  such  a  tart  sentence  as  that  of  his 
describing  two  players  in  ''  Romeo  and  Juliet," 
who  reminded  him  of  two  grasshoppers  "  pur- 
suing their  stridulous  loves  in  the  hollow  of 
a  cabbage-leaf."  It  is  not  in  such  a  flowing 
phrase  of  merry  irony  as  this : 

"  Mme.  Bernhardt  sometimes  made  her  sexual 
monsters  interesting  —  wielding  the  lethal  hairpin 
or  the  persuasive  hatchet  with  Gallic  grace  and 
sweet  celerity." 

Nor  is  it  in  his  eulogistic  passages,  where  his 
prose  tended  to  become  Johnsonian  and  a  little 
supercharged  with  sentiment.  But  there  is  a 
supreme  example  in  his  book,  "  Old  Friends." 
He  is  speaking  of  Margaret  Fuller,  whom  he 
disliked,  if  for  no  other  reason,  because  she 
had  dared  to  criticise  Longfellow.  Here  is  his 
paragraph  about  her: 


296  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

"  Invidious  criticism  of  Longfellow's  poetry  was 
written,  with  peculiar  zest,  by  Miss  Margaret  Fuller, 
a  native  of  Cambridge,  who  married  an  Italian  and 
became  Countess  d'Ossoli.  She  was  a  clever  woman, 
of  a  somewhat  tart  temper,  and  prone  to  the  peevish 
ill-nature  of  a  discontented  mind.  In  the  early  days 
of  the  New  York  Tribune  she  was  a  contributor  to 
that  paper,  and,  more  or  less,  to  the  perplexities  of 
its  eccentric  founder,  Horace  Greeley.  Both  Long- 
fellow and  his  w-ife  spoke  of  her  to  me  with  obvi- 
ous, though  courteously  veiled,  dislike.  Her  health 
was  not  robust;  she  suffered  from  some  form  of 
spinal  disease  that  caused  her  occasionally  to  wriggle 
when  seated.  She  figures  among  the  writers  com- 
memorated by  the  venomous  industry  of  Rufus 
Wilmot  Griswold,  and  she  is  chiefly  remembered 
as  having  perished  in  a  shipwreck  on  the  southern 
coast  of  Long  Island." 

This  light  and  airy  flight  of  a  poisoned 
arrow  is  style  at  its  perfection;  it  is  wit 
chained  and  driven  by  a  master.  But  why  say 
more?  The  paragraph  is  complete.  It  makes 
you  forget  Mr.  Winter's  review  of  *'  Brown 
of  Harvard,"  which  concluded  about  as 
follows: 

"  Mr.  Woodruff  sang  a  pretty  song.  There  was 
no  acting." 

Faults  as  a  critic  Mr.  Winter  had,  of  course. 
Chief  among  them  many  of  the  present  gen- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  297 

eration  will  probably  count  his  consistent  and 
unremitting  hostility  to  the  new  drama  o£ 
realism,  especially  to  every  attempt  to  put 
upon  the  stage,  even  with  the  most  honest  of 
intentions,  any  picture  of  the  seamy  side  of 
life.  It  was  that  hostility,  without  question, 
which  lost  Mr.  Winter  influence  in  later  years, 
for  he  was  waging  a  hopeless  fight,  trying  to 
dam  an  irresistible  stream  of  tendency  with 
the  Tribune!  But  he  never  fought  so  well, 
nor  so  wittily,  as  when  he  was  fighting  Pinero 
and  Shaw  and  Ibsen  and  Sudermann  and  the 
rest  of  the  moderns.  And,  after  all,  it  is  good 
to  have  such  a  fighter  for  the  old  order  among 
us.  We  need  to  be  held  back  long  enough  to 
be  made  to  consider  well  why  we  think  the  new 
thing  the  true  thing.  Such  a  restraining  voice 
was  Mr.  Winter's. 

I  have  called  him  a  Puritan  and  a  sentiment- 
alist. He  was  a  Puritan  in  his  conception  of 
art  as  something  that  should  always  "  leave  a 
pleasant  taste  in  the  mouth  " ;  in  his  Ruskinian 
passion  for  morality  on  the  stage.  He  was  too 
much  of  a  Puritan  to  see  that  a  play  about 
immorality  is  only  immoral  if  its  author  in- 
tended it  to  wake  in  us  evil  thoughts;  that  the 
lewd  farce  is  immoral,  while  Ibsen's  "  Ghosts  " 
—  to  take  one  of  his  pet  aversions  —  fills  us 
only  with  pity,  horror,  and  compassion.  Mr. 
Winter,  who  could  call  a  spade  a  spade  in  his 


298  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

reviews,  insisted  that  it  should  be  called  an 
agricultural  implement  on  the  stage,  if  it  had 
to  be  mentioned  at  all.  He  was  a  sentimental- 
ist in  his  conception  of  art,  because  in  his  es- 
thetic scheme  there  was  no  place  for  realism, 
pleasant  or  unpleasant,  only  for  "  the  delicate 
exaggeration  of  life,"  of  which  he  so  often 
spoke;  and  no  place  for  didactic  drama,  only 
for  entertainment.  One  is  almost  tempted  to 
say  that  he  was  a  large  mind  demanding  of 
art  that  story-book  unreality  so  dear  to  small 
minds,  and  to  women.  He  loved  his  Shake- 
speare passionately;  he  loved  the  artificial 
comedy  of  an  elder  day;  he  loved  "  the  well- 
made  play  "  of  incident  and  suspense,  for  its 
stirring  theatric  effect.  For  the  modern 
drama,  since  Ibsen,  he  had  no  liking,  no  toler- 
ance. It  belonged  to  another  generation  of 
esthetic  ideals. 

Of  acting,  however,  Mr.  Winter  always 
knew  more  than  any  other  American  critic, 
and  he  kept  his  instincts  generally  true  till  the 
day  he  laid  down  his  pen,  even  though  his 
early  ideals  had  been  shaped  by  the  older 
rhetorical  and  "  heroic  "  school.  He  was,  for 
examj)le,  in  recent  years  a  warm  champion  of 
Mrs.  Fiske,  our  arch  naturalist.  He  was  such 
an  ardent  admirer  when  he  admired,  and  such 
a  '*  good  hater  "  when  he  hated,  that  often  his 
praise  seemed  overwrought,  his  condemnation 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  299 

unduly  bitter.  Witness  his  remarks  about  the 
two  poor  players  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet."  But 
a  good  lover  and  a  good  hater,  especially  in 
these  days  of  "  letting  down  easy,"  is  a  stimu- 
lating person,  after  all,  and  worth  a  thousand 
little  critics  balancing  timidly  on  the  fence, 
afraid  to  fall  on  either  side. 

And  almost  always,  it  must  be  remembered, 
William  Winter  hated  the  bad,  admired  and 
praised  the  good,  in  acting.  He  possessed  a 
delicate  intuitive  perception  of  what  the  author 
intended  a  character  to  be,  and  he  could  sepa- 
rate the  actor  from  the  part  and  then  tell,  in 
no  uncertain  language,  whether  he  was  real- 
izing that  part  or  not,  and  if  not,  why  not. 
That  "  why  not  "  baffles  most  critics  of  the 
stage.  Read  their  notices,  and  you  find  them 
chiefly  concerned  with  the  play.  A  paragraph 
or  two  is  tagged  on  the  end,  saying  that  So- 
and-So  was  "  adequate  "  —  atrocious  word, 
which  means  nothing.  William  Winter  knew 
the  art  of  acting,  its  possibilities,  its  limita- 
tions. He  never  resorted  to  the  subterfuge  of 
meaningless  words  to  cover  his  ignorance.  He 
told,  in  exact,  skilfully  chosen  language,  just 
what  the  actor  had  or  had  not  done ;  and  not- 
ably in  such  reviews  as  his  essays  on  Jefferson, 
Booth,  or  Irving  he  could  make  you,  the  reader, 
feel  long  afterward  the  charm  and  thrill  of  a 
great  performance. 


300  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

PI.  T.  Parker  has  recently  written  of  him 
in  the  Boston  Transcript : 

"  Paltry  little  stars,  of  no  possible  account  except 
to  themselves,  their  managers,  and  an  ephemeral 
public,  he  treated  with  becoming  scorn.  If  the 
player  was  blundering,  but  promising,  he  could  be 
a  sedulous  instructor  in  a  way  that  has  rather  gone 
out  of  the  fashion  in  reviewing.  Above  all,  since 
the  reviewing  of  acting  is  designed  more  for  the 
public  that  reads  than  for  the  players  that  act,  Mr. 
Winter,  with  his  warmth  of  imagination  and  his 
artistry  of  word,  could  summon  the  impersonation 
that  he  had  seen  and  was  testing.  Plays,  too  often, 
have  been  his  texts  for  preachments.  Actors  and 
acting  he  has  touched  with  knowledge,  sympathy, 
imagination,  even  poetry." 

The  results  of  that  knowledge  and  sympa- 
thy were  graciously  written  records  of  our 
foremost  players  for  nearly  half  a  century, 
found  in  his  lives  of  Booth,  Mansfield,  and 
Jefferson,  his  "  Shadows  of  the  Stage,"  his 
"  Other  Days,"  and  in  the  files  of  the  Tribune 
—  from  which  they  should  be  rescued.  These 
records,  and  not  his  poetry,  will  probably  be 
Mr.  Winter's  specific  contribution  to  American 
letters. 

But,  more  immediately,  he  has  exercised, 
whether  upon  those  who  agree  or  who  dis- 
agree with  his  views,  a  stimulating  and  not 
unncedcd  influence  for  a  more  dignified  and 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  301 

sincere  conception  of  dramatic  criticism,  for  a 
finer  standard  of  writing  about  a  fine  art.  In 
his  last  contribution  to  the  Tribune  he  said : 

"  The  obligation  resting  upon  such  a  writer,  ac- 
cordingly, is  clear.  He  must  write  for  the  infor- 
mation and  benefit  of  readers. 

"  The  task  of  the  critic  exacts  specific  qualifica- 
tions and  steadfast  allegiance  to  high  and  stern 
principles,  intellectual  and  moral.  It  is  a  part  of 
his  duty  to  know  the  literature  of  the  drama;  to 
discriminate  betwixt  declamation  and  acting,  be- 
twixt appearance  and  impersonation;  to  see  the 
mental,  moral,  and  spiritual  aspects  of  the  stage, 
and  likewise  to  see  the  popular,  the  expedient,  and 
the  mercenary  aspects  of  it ;  to  make  due  allowance 
for  all  the  obstacles  that  confront  well-intended 
endeavor;  to  hold  the  scale  true;  to  reach  the  in- 
telligence of  a  great  public  of  miscellaneous  readers; 
to  respect,  as  far  as  possible,  the  feelings  and  am- 
bitions of  actors;  to  praise  with  discretion  and  yet 
with  force  —  displaying  somewhat  more  than  the 
fervor  of  an  animated  clam;  to  censure  without 
undue  severity;  to  denounce  explicitly,  and  as  often 
as  necessary,  the  influences,  often  operant  by  misuse 
of  the  stage,  that  would  vitiate  taste  and  morals; 
to  think  quickly  and  speak  quickly,  yet  make  no 
error;  to  check,  oppose,  and  discomfit  on  all  occa- 
sions the  leveling  spirit  of  sordid  "  commercialism," 
which  is  forever  striving  to  degrade  every  high  ideal 
and  mobble  it  in  the  ruck  of  mediocrity;  to  give 
not  alone  knowledge,  study,  and  technical  skill,  in 


302  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

the  exercise  of  literary  art,  for  the  good  of  the 
theatre,  but  also  the  best  power  of  the  mind  and  the 
deepest  feelings  of  the  heart  to  the  celebration  and 
embellishment  of  the  labor  of  others." 

This  is  a  splendid  ideal.  For  forty-four 
years,  to  the  best  of  his  ability  and  according 
to  the  light  God  gave  him,  William  Winter 
tried  to  follow  it.  Will  men  say  as  much  of 
the  rest  of  us  when  we  lay  down  our  pens? 
And,  if  they  should,  should  we  not  have  to 
admit,  should  we  not  gladly  admit,  that  he  was 
one  of  the  first  to  follow  it  in  the  theatrical 
journalism  of  America,  and,  by  the  fame  he 
won  and  the  example  he  set,  put  us  on  the 
way? 


ORGANIZING   AUDIENCES 

THE  DRAMA   LEAGUE  OF  AMERICA 

A  hopeful  sign  of  progress  in  our  theatre 
in  recent  years  has  been  the  growth  in  several 
parts  of  the  country  of  a  tendency  to  regard 
the  theatre  not  merely  as  an  amusement  to 
be  patronized  indiscriminately  but  as  a  social 
force  to  be  studied  and  at  times  to  be,  if  pos- 
sible, regulated.  Not  only  have  several  of  our 
Eastern  universities,  led  by  Harvard,  placed 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  303 

the  study  of  the  practical  drama  where  it  be- 
longs, as  a  branch  of  the  Fine  Arts,  but  the 
MacDowell  Club  of  New  York,  an  association 
of  students  and  practitioners  of  the  several 
arts,  in  the  autumn  of  1909  appointed  a  com- 
mittee on  drama  which  visited  the  various 
theatres  during  the  season  and  recommended 
to  the  club  such  plays  as  seemed  artistically 
worthy,  arranged  a  series  of  readings  of 
American  dramas,  and  in  other  ways  strove 
to  encourage  intelligent  play-going  among  the 
six  hundred  members  of  the  organization; 
the  Twentieth  Century  Club  of  Boston  dur- 
ing the  same  season  investigated  every  place 
of  amusement  in  the  city,  covering  a  period  of 
ten  weeks,  in  an  effort  to  determine  exactly 
what  sort  of  plays  and  picture  shows  were 
being  presented  and  what  steps  could  be  taken 
to  improve  their  quality;  for  two  seasons  that 
worthy  organization,  the  People's  Institute 
of  New  York,  has  officially  censored  all  the 
moving-picture  films  shown  in  the  six  hundred 
picture  houses  of  the  city,  to  protect  the  thou- 
sands of  juvenile  patrons;  and,  finally,  in  the 
spring  of  1910,  the  Drama  Club  of  Evanston, 
Illinois,  after  quietly  working  for  two  years 
among  its  own  members,  called  a  meeting  of 
various  women's  clubs  in  and  near  Chicago 
and  organized  the  Drama  League  of  America. 
For    the   benefit    of    any    who    would    like 


304  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

to  communicate  with  the  League  the  Hst  of 
officers  elected  for  the  first  year  is  here 
presented : 

President:  Mrs.  A.  Starr  Best,  Evanston  Drama 
League. 

Vice-presidents:  Mrs.  Henry  L.  Frank,  Chi- 
cago Woman's  Ckib;  Dr.  Richard  Burton,  Uni- 
versity of  Minnesota;  Mrs.  E.  P.  Sherry,  Milwau- 
kee; Dr.  William  Norman  Guthrie,  Tennessee; 
Mrs.  Otis  Skinner,  Bryn  Mawr;  and  Louis 
Kaufman  Anspacher,  New  York. 

Secretary:  Mrs.  H.  W.  Duncanson,  5457  Win- 
throp  Ave.,  Chicago. 

There  is  the  possibility  of  much  genuine 
achievement  in  these  various  movements,  if 
they  are  wisely  guided.  The  censorship  of 
moving-picture  films  has  already  affected  the 
entire  country,  for  no  manufacturer  wishes  to 
put  out  a  film  that  cannot  be  rented  in  New 
York  City.  The  reports  on  plays  prepared  by 
the  committee  of  the  MacDowell  Club,  while 
as  yet  their  effect  is  scarcely  appreciable  out- 
side of  the  limited  membership  of  the  club,  will 
in  another  season  be  sent  to  other  organiza- 
tions, where  they  may  make  here  and  there 
a  few  patrons  for  a  worthy  play.  The  Twen- 
tieth Century  Club  of  Boston  has  at  least 
called  attention  to  certain  abuses  of  the  the- 
atre, which  the  newspapers,  for  advertising 
reasons,  ignore,  even  if  much  of  the  prelimi- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  305 

nary  work  has  been  conducted  in  the  narrowly 
Puritanic  spirit  characteristic  of  the  Hub. 
But  it  is  the  work  begun  by  the  Drama  CKib 
of  Evanston,  now  to  be  continued  on  a  wider 
scale  by  the  Drama  League,  which  holds  the 
possibilities  of  the  most  far-reaching  results. 

The  Drama  Club  prepared  for  its  members 
a  course  of  reading  in  dramatic  literature.  It 
caused  to  be  reserved  on  a  special  shelf  in  the 
public  library  all  the  books  about  the  stage  con- 
tained there,  and  in  one  season  added  one 
hundred  volumes  to  the  collection.  And  it  en- 
couraged more  directly  among  its  members 
attendance  upon  the  best  plays  current  in  the 
theatre.  It  will  be  the  object  of  the  Drama 
League,  no  doubt,  to  do  these  same  things  in 
every  community  where  a  women's  club  or 
other  organization  exists  which  will  consent 
to  join  the  movement.  This  means  an  organ- 
ized attempt  to  train  audiences,  to  stimulate  a 
study  of  the  theory  of  the  theatre  and  to  in- 
crease attendance  upon  the  better  class  of 
plays  in  the  actual  playhouse.  The  movement, 
naturally,  is  largely  among  the  women  of  the 
country,  and  already  it  has  extended  to  clubs 
embracing  a  total  membership  of  several  thou- 
sand. If  it  could  be  still  farther  extended  to 
include  all  the  women's  clubs  of  the  land,  and 
if  it  could  maintain  their  interest  and  success- 
fully stimulate  their  growth  in  appreciation,  its 


806  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

power  for  good  in  the  American  theatre  would 
be  ahiiost  incalculable. 

For  were  it  not  for  the  ladies  half  our  the- 
atres would  shut  up  shop.  Matinee  audiences 
at  the  better  class  of  playhouses  are  almost 
entirely  feminine,  and  evening  audiences  are 
usually  sixty  to  seventy  per  cent  feminine,  too. 
IMoreover,  Charles  Burnham,  who  has  been  a 
theatrical  manager  for  forty  years,  has  re- 
marked that  half  the  men  who  do  come  to  see 
serious  plays  come  because  their  wives  or 
sweethearts  want  to.  Left  to  themselves,  says 
Mr.  Burnham,  the  men  would  go  to  a  musical 
comedy,  a  vaudeville  show,  or  their  club. 
There  is  a  good  deal  of  truth  in  this  statement. 
The  fate  of  the  drama  in  America  lies  much 
more  in  the  hands  of  the  women  than  a  first 
thought  would  suppose. 

It  has  been  affirmed,  even  in  the  face  of  the 
dramas  of  Miss  Crothers,  that  a  woman  can- 
not write  a  play.  She  hardly  needs  to  if  her 
sex  can  dictate  what  kind  of  plays  are  pro- 
duced. That  her  sex  does  dictate  in  the  the- 
atre there  can  be  no  question.  The  manager 
who  controls  the  American  rights  to  the 
dramas  of  Henry  Arthur  Jones  refused  to 
produce  here  "  Dolly  Reforming  Herself,"  be- 
cause he  said  it  would  offend  American  women. 
The  managers  of  "  The  Fourth  Estate,"  stand- 
ing in  the  lobby  at  the  conclusion  of  the  open- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  307 

ing  performances  in  New  York,  listened  to  the 
remarks  of  the  women  as  they  left  the  theatre 
and  on  the  basis  of  those  remarks  caused  the 
author  to  alter  his  ending,  to  rescue  his  hero 
from  death  and  precipitate  him  upon  the  pal- 
pitating and  type-imprinted  bosom  of  the 
heroine.  It  was  this  same  managerial  fear  of 
offending  the  feminine  love  of  a  happy  conclu- 
sion to  every  play  which  caused  the  mercenary 
Bernstein  to  maltreat  his  drama,  "  Israel,"  in 
return  for  American  dollars.  Cases  could  be 
multiplied  ad  infinitum  of  the  direct  influence 
upon  our  drama  of  the  feminine  standards  of 
taste  in  the  theatre.  At  a  performance  of  a 
serious  play  in  New  York  last  winter  the  pop- 
ular actress  who  assumed  the  leading  role  wore 
a  plain,  severe  cloth  dress  in  the  opening  act, 
as  befitted  the  character.  A  woman  in  the  au- 
dience was  heard  to  remark  with  a  sigh  to  her 
companion,  ''  Well,  perhaps  she  '11  wear  some- 
thing better  in  the  next  act !  "  At  a  perform- 
ance of  Stephen  Phillips'  tragedy  of  "  Herod  " 
a  woman  was  overheard  to  say,  "  There!  This 
is  the  last  play  I  '11  let  my  husband  pick  out  for 
me.  I  've  seen  two  suicides  already  this  week 
and  now  the  dead  are  piling  up  three  deep." 
So  much  for  poetic  tragedy! 

Such  remarks  as  these  cannot  be  smiled 
away.  The  managers  listen  to  them,  and  pick 
their  plays  accordingly. 


308  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

We  are  all  acquainted,  unfortunately,  with 
the  woman  who  "  knows  what  she  likes."  This 
generally  means  that  she  regards  the  drama 
as  a  kind  of  mental  warm  bath  or  emotional 
chocolate  cream;  that  she  refuses  to  consider 
a  play  for  its  truth  to  the  conditions  depicted, 
for  its  logical  conclusions,  for  its  artistic  in- 
tegrity, but  judges  it  according  as  it  meas- 
ures down  to  her  limited  standards  of  appre- 
ciation or  amiably  tickles  her  sentimental 
tracts.  If  the  subject  matter  of  a  play  does 
not  please  her  she  will  have  nothing  to  do 
with  it.  There  is  a  story  of  a  man  who  could 
not  appreciate  a  beautiful  etching  of  a  child 
because,  he  said,  he  did  n't  like  babies.  That 
is  the  attitude  of  too  many  women  toward  the 
theatre.  What  the  general  masculine  attitude 
is  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  present  case.  The 
attitude  of  the  feminine  portion  of  the  audi- 
ence counts  for  more,  at  any  rate,  since  in  the 
theatre  the  majority  rules. 

Barrett  Wendell  once  cynically  remarked 
that  the  duty  of  the  drama  seems  to  be  to 
send  the  suburbs  home  happy.  An  important 
element  of  suburban  life  now,  sharing  atten- 
tion with  bridge  whist,  automobiles,  and  babies, 
is  the  Woman's  Club.  In  the  Woman's  Club 
culture  is  attended  to.  Classes  in  domestic 
science  discuss  the  cost  of  living  and  Mrs. 
Brown's  social  standing.     Classes  in  literature 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  309 

discuss  the  works  of  Matthew  Arnold  and 
Robert  W.  Chambers.  Classes  in  art  listen 
to  rhapsodies  on  Raphael.  Lectures  abound 
on  every  conceivable  subject,  and  some  which 
are  not  conceivable.  Is  it  going  to  be  possible 
for  the  drama  to  gain  by  this  universal,  if  too 
often  superficial  seeking  for  sweetness  and 
light;  for  the  drama  to  get  itself  acknowledged 
as  an  art  worthy  of  serious  study,  not  the 
classic  drama  of  the  printed  page,  but  the 
drama  of  the  actual  playhouse,  of  here  and 
now?  Will  there  come  a  time  when  the  sub- 
urbs, tripping  to  town  for  a  matinee,  will  seek 
not  to  be  sent  home  happy,  but  to  find  the 
enjoyment  of  truthful,  logical  depiction  upon 
the  stage  of  the  facts  of  Hfe,  not  blinked  at, 
not  glossed  over  with  the  veneer  of  sentimen- 
tality, but  set  forth  if  need  be  mercilessly;  to 
find,  also,  the  enjoyment  of  poetry,  of  satire, 
of  fantasy,  of  tragedy? 

That,  I  take  it,  is  the  problem  the  Drama 
League  has  set  itself  to  solve. 

There  are  thousands  of  women's  clubs  in 
this  country.  Their  membership  is  an  impor- 
tant part  of  theatrical  audiences,  and  concerted 
action  by  all  these  theatre-goers  could  make 
the  success  of  a  play,  while  the  guaranty  of 
such  concerted  action  could  often  induce  a 
manager  to  mount  a  drama  for  which  other- 
wise  he   would  not   assume   the   risk.     It   is, 


310  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

however,  extremely  difficult  to  make  anybody 
go  to  a  play  by  telling  him  he  ought  to.  Con- 
certed action  on  so  large  a  scale  as  materially 
and  visibly  to  affect  the  fate  of  any  specific 
play  is  probably  not  immediately  possible, 
though  it  is  said  that  the  League  in  its  first 
season  greatly  aided  the  engagement  of  the 
New  Theatre  Company  in  Chicago. 

But,  wisely  conducted,  the  Drama  League 
can,  through  the  women's  clubs,  in  a  steadily 
increasing  degree  leaven  popular  appreciation 
and  make  for  the  slow  increase  of  a  public  for 
the  drama  as  an  art.  That  in  time,  of  course, 
will  directly  react  upon  the  managers,  encour- 
aging them  more  and  more  to  produce  worthy 
plays  without  perverted  or  illogical  adaptation 
to  meet  the  supposed  demands  of  the  feminine 
auditors.  The  American  attitude  toward  the 
theatre  is  too  often  expressed  completely  in  the 
one  word  so  frequently  on  our  lips  —  the  word 
"  show."  "  What 's  the  show  at  the  Empire 
this  week?"  we  say.  And  therein  we  express 
not  so  much  our  contempt  for  as  our  total 
indifference  to  the  drama  as  an  art.  Until  we 
ourselves  alter  this  attitude  there  will  be  little 
alteration  in  managerial  policies. 

The  ways  in  which  the  women's  clubs  can 
make  for  the  increase  of  a  public  for  the 
drama  as  an  art  are  two. 

First,  as  in  the  case  of  music,  or  as  in  the 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  311 

case  of  scholarship  in  a  university  or  school, 
they  can  create  an  atmosphere  of  respect  for 
the  better  and  more  serious  things,  they  can 
break  down  that  smug  self-satisfaction  so 
common  to  small  minds  and  so  well  exempli- 
fied by  the  lady  who  "  knows  what  she  likes." 
In  a  community  where  scholarship  is  respected 
a  youth  is  ashamed  to  admit  ignorance.  In 
a  community  where  the  drama  is  respected  a 
man  or  woman  is  ashamed  to  admit  failure  to 
understand  and  enjoy  the  better  things. 
Shame  is  a  great  spur.  What  is  accomplished 
in  any  branch  of  activity  in  a  community  de- 
pends on  the  communistic  ideal. 

Second,  the  women's  clubs  can  more  directly 
make  for  the  increase  of  a  public  for  drama 
as  an  art  by  the  appointment  of  a  carefully 
chosen  committee  to  watch  the  theatres  in  each 
community  and  to  recommend  to  the  club's 
attention  such  plays  as  are  worthy  of  consid- 
eration on  artistic  grounds,  to  stimulate  inter- 
est in  these  plays  and  study  of  them  in  advance 
of  their  coming,  and  to  urge  all  members  to 
patronize  them  when  they  arrive. 

To  accomplish  the  first  of  these  aims,  to 
create  an  atmosphere  of  respect  for  the  art 
of  the  theatre,  lectures,  the  study  of  printed 
plays,  the  consideration  of  sound  criticism  — 
all  have  their  place.  It  is  bound  to  be  a  mat- 
ter of  slow  growth.     Before  there  can  be  any 


312  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

proper  respect  for  the  art  of  the  theatre,  one 
needs  must  understand  what  the  art  of  the 
theatre  is,  and  it  is  no  easier  to  learn  the 
principles  of  that  art  than  of  any  other.  But 
it  has,  to  a  certain  extent,  been  accomplished  in 
the  case  of  music,  and  it  can  be  accomplished 
in  the  case  of  drama.  Books  about  music  are 
in  great  demand.  Books  about  the  drama 
should  be  no  less  diligently  circulated.  Per- 
haps, too,  a  widespread  interest  in  printed 
plays  would  have  the  wholesome  effect  of  in- 
ducing publishers  to  issue  the  texts  of  success- 
ful dramas,  which  would  not  only  make  for 
a  more  careful  public  consideration  of  these 
plays,  but  would  stimulate  the  authors  to  a 
more  careful  and  polished  writing.  A  thou- 
sand demands  for  a  printed  text  —  not  an 
impossible  number,  surely  —  would  probably 
bring  results  in  the  publisher's  office. 

Many  of  our  colleges  to-day  are  doing  splen- 
did work  to  increase  intelligent  consideration 
of  the  practical  theatre.  It  is  no  part  of  the 
training  gained  under  such  a  man  as  Profes- 
sor Baker  of  Harvard  or  Professor  Phelps  of 
Yale  to  deprecate  a  good  musical  comedy,  a 
funny  farce,  or  any  other  form  of  enjoyable 
dramatic  entertainment.  What  is  sought  is 
the  ability  to  discriminate  between  the  false 
and  the  true,  and  a  corresponding  regard  for 
the  true  and  scorn  of  the  false.     To  say  that 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  313 

the  ability  to  discriminate  between  the  false 
and  the  true  does  not  exist  to  a  considerable 
extent  among  American  theatre-goers  every- 
where, to  be  sure,  would  be  absurd.  But  the 
popular  reception  of  such  a  play  as  "  A  Fool 
There  Was,"  for  instance,  or  "  The  Fighting 
Hope,"  shows  that  the  ability  is  less  general 
than  we  could  wish  it,  and  the  languishing  in- 
terest in  many  sound  and  true  plays,  such  as 
Laurence  Irving's  adaptations  of  Brieux's 
dramas,  shows  that  a  loyal  enthusiasm  for 
truth  in  the  theatre  is  less  strong  than  the 
desire  for  mere  amusement. 

After  all,  amusement  is  a  relative  term. 
What  amuses  the  child  does  not  amuse  his 
parents.  What  amused  a  man  who  had  never 
been  to  any  theatrical  entertainment  but  a 
vaudeville  show  might  conceivably  not  amuse 
him  after  he  had  seen  Sothern  and  Marlowe, 
David  Warfield,  the  New  Theatre  company, 
and  John  Drew.  Many  people  have  been 
cured  of  the  popular  song  habit  by  listening 
to  Schubert.  And  the  hosts  of  women  who 
"  know  what  they  like  "  —  which  means  that 
they  refuse  to  admit  there  exist  any  standards 
of  taste  but  their  own,  or  that  the  possibility 
of  growth  lies  open  to  them  after  they  have 
graduated  into  long  skirts  and  matrimony  — 
may  conceivably  learn  to  like  plays  w^here 
truth   takes   the   place   of   sentimentality   and 


314.  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

fine  acting  of  pretty  clothes  and  conventional 
endings,  if  only  they  can  be  induced  to  attend 
these  plays  often  enough.  One  of  the  ways 
to  make  them  go  to  such  plays  is  to  create  an 
atmosphere  in  their  club  and  their  community 
of  respect  for  such  plays,  and  scorn  of  the 
intellectual  attainments  of  those  who  cannot 
understand.  This  is  fraught  with  the  danger 
of  what  Professor  Guthrie  calls  "  intellectual 
snobbery,"  and  many  silly  fads  and  undigested 
"  culture  "  will  no  doubt  result  from  any  con- 
siderable effort  in  this  direction.  But  the 
possible  result  is  worth  the  price. 

But  how  are  these  plays  to  be  discriminat- 
ingly selected  for  them,  and  how  are  the  man- 
agers to  be  encouraged  to  mount  such  plays 
to  select  from?  Many  such  plays  are  mounted 
now,  to  be  sure,  but  more  would  undoubtedly 
reach  the  stage  if  public  patronage  for  them 
were  more  assured.  This  work  will  probably 
have  to  be  done  by  committees,  and  on  the 
judicious  selection  of  such  committees,  and 
their  judicious  conduct  in  office,  will  depend, 
it  seems  to  me,  in  large  measure  the  success 
of  all  such  movements  as  the  Drama  League, 
alike  for  the  betterment  of  the  members  of 
the  league  and  of  the  stage  itself. 

First  and  foremost,  above  everything  else, 
such  committees  must  realize  that  they  are  not 
censors  of  the  stage,  that  censorship  is  no  part 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  315 

of  their  task,  that  their  sole  duty  is  to  point 
out  the  plays  which  are  artistically  effective 
and  true  and  to  urge  their  clubmates  to  at- 
tend them.  Any  committee  should  be  com- 
posed of  men  as  well  as  women;  it  should 
contain  various  shades  of  opinion  and  taste; 
but  there  should  be  at  least  one  man  or  woman 
upon  it  who  is  familiar  with  the  history  and 
traditions  of  the  theatre,  and  none  whose  judg- 
ments cannot  command  the  respect  of  the  com- 
munity at  large. 

This  committee  should  have  a  high,  but  not 
a  narrow  standard,  welcoming  alike  good  for- 
eign work,  poetic  drama,  satire,  comedy  with 
point,  musical  pieces  which  have  real  musical 
value,  such  as  "  The  Chocolate  Soldier "  or 
"  The  Red  Mill,"  and  above  all  truthful  native 
drama  depicting  contemporary  life;  and  it 
should  completely  ignore  every  play  which  does 
not  measure  up  to  this  standard.  The  surest 
way  for  such  a  committee  to  defeat  its  own 
end  and  to  render  the  whole  movement  ridicu- 
lous in  the  eyes  of  the  community  at  large  — 
and  if  it  does  not  command  the  respect  of  the 
community  at  large  it  will  surely  fail  —  is  to 
attempt  to  censor  plays,  to  presume  to  dictate 
what  plays  people  shall  not  attend,  to  blue 
pencil  the  drama  for  the  benefit  of  tender 
suburban  susceptibilities  and  prejudices,  or  for 
the  Young  Person.     The  Twentieth  Century 


S16  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Club  in  Boston  has  already  made  itself  ridicu- 
lous through  its  drama  committee  by  condemn- 
ing the  last  act  of  ''  Don  "  as  "  immoral  " ! 
Doubtless  this  committee  would  have  thrown 
a  moral  fit  over  "  The  Easiest  Way."  There 
are  certain  palpably  lewd  "  shows,"  like  "  The 
Girl  From  Rector's,"  which  may  be  mentioned 
as  unfit  for  patronage,  though  even  here  any 
comment  is  usually  an  advertisement,  and 
silence  is  the  best  means  of  killing  off  the 
breed.  If  they  are  too  flagrant,  let  the  police 
revoke  the  theatre's  license. 

But  in  the  case  of  all  serious  dramas  the  one 
and  only  test  to  apply  to  them  is,  are  they 
true,  are  they  artistically  sound,  are  they  dra- 
matically effective?  If  they  are  it  is  the  duty 
of  the  committee  to  recommend  them,  or,  if 
it  is  still  too  suburban  and  hide-bound  to  for- 
give them  their  unpleasant  subject  matter,  to 
say  nothing  whatever  about  them.  Men  and 
women  capable  of  writing,  producing,  and  ap- 
preciating good  drama  existed  before  the 
Drama  League  was  founded,  and  the  league 
will  gain  nothing  by  telling  these  people  that 
they  are  ignoramuses  or  perverts.  One  of  the 
reasons  so  large  a  portion  of  the  public  does 
not  care  for  the  cleansing  beauty  of  poetic 
tragedy  is  because  it  has  been  so  long  dieted 
on  sentimentality,  has  so  long  demanded  to 
"  sec  something  pleasant  in  the  theatre."    One 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  317 

of  the  reasons  there  exists  so  Httle  conscious 
appreciation  of  logical  development  in  plays  is 
because  we  have  been  unwilling  to  face  the 
facts  of  life.  One  of  the  first  essentials  to 
any  real  appreciation  of  the  drama  as  an 
art  is  the  willingness  and  desire  to  let  the 
playwright  say  his  say  and  to  judge  him  ac- 
cording to  his  success  as  a  craftsman.  No- 
body will  be  helped  to  an  appreciation  of  poetic 
drama,  of  allegory,  of  any  of  the  higher  forms 
of  theatrical  art  which  the  Drama  League 
seems  to  desire,  until  he  —  or  she  —  is  helped 
to  put  aside  all  prejudice  in  the  theatre  and 
to  judge  a  play  solely  on  its  artistic  merits, 
its  truth.  Nobody  will  be  led  to  the  point  of 
demanding  good  American  plays  till  he  —  or 
she  —  is  ready  to  give  the  playwright  full 
swing,  and  is  ready  to  acclaim  him  according 
as  his  work  is  vital  and  veracious. 

Our  playwrights  have  too  long  been  willing 
merely  to  send  the  suburbs  home  happy.  It 
is  against  this  very  thing  the  Drama  League 
proposes  in  reality  to  work.  It  desires  our 
playwrights  to  send  the  suburbs  home  a  little 
wiser,  a  little  more  thoughtful,  a  little  more 
kindled  by  what  the  stage  has  shown  to  an 
understanding  of  humanity,  to  sympathy,  to 
pity,  as  well  as  to  a  comprehension  of  poetic 
glamour  or  the  whispers  of  romance.  This 
will  not  be  accomplished  by  trying  to  dictate 


BIB  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

to  people  what  they  shall  not  see,  rather  than 
what  they  shall;  it  will  certainly  not  be  ac- 
complished by  trying  to  make  the  drama  a 
pleasant  refuge  from  reality  and  a  pastime  for 
young  girls. 

It  is  not  the  duty  of  our  good  ladies  to  make 
the  drama  fit  for  their  daughters,  but  to  make 
their  daughters  fit  for  the  drama. 

This  will  only  be  accomplished  by  encour- 
aging the  dramatists  to  write  and  the  man- 
agers to  produce  plays  in  which  the  one  test 
of  value  is  truth  to  life,  artistic  integrity,  and 
vital  theatric  appeal.  Such  dramas  will  much 
more  often  than  not  be  concerned  with  "  pleas- 
ant "  subjects,  for  joy  dwells  deepest  in  the 
human  heart,  no  less  in  the  heart  of  the  artist 
than  any  other.  But  that  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  case.  What  is  sought  is  the  encour- 
agement of  the  drama  as  an  art,  and  that 
can  only  be  given  by  letting  the  artist  write 
"  the  thing  that  he  pleases,  as  pleases  him 
best." 

The  Drama  League  can  never  stop  the  vul- 
gar breed  of  managers  from  producing  dirty 
farces,  and  that  is  no  part  of  its  business;  nor 
can  it  compel  ladies  of  the  chorus  to  don  long 
skirts,  and  that  is  no  part  of  its  business, 
either.  It  can,  however,  induce  many  of  its 
members  to  attend  the  performances  of  sound, 
truthful  plays,  and  so  help  them  to  an  appre- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  319 

ciation  of  the  art  of  the  theatre  and  help  the 
artists  of  the  theatre  to  gain  a  wider  patron- 
age. That  is  its  duty,  and  its  whole  duty. 
The  minute  the  Drama  League  or  any  similar 
organization  begins  to  wave  the  moral  buga- 
boo, begins  to  dictate  what  plays  its  members 
—  and  inferentially  other  people  —  shall  not 
see,  its  days  of  usefulness  are  over,  and  it  will 
rapidly  end  by  becoming  a  joke. 


THE  CHEAP  THEATRE  AND  THE 
YOUNG 

To  seek  the  sources  from  which  Shake- 
speare drew  his  "  Hamlet "  three  centuries 
ago  and  to  study  the  effect  of  a  performance 
of  "  Hamlet "  on  the  children  and  young 
people  of  a  city  slum  to-day  are  alike  legiti- 
mate fields  of  investigation  for  the  dramatic 
critic.  Which  will  seem  the  more  important 
depends  upon  the  critic's  temperament.  The 
fact  remains,  however,  that  the  modern  ideals 
of  social  service,  of  the  conservation  and  im- 
provement of  our  human  no  less  than  our 
material  resources,  are  rapidly  extending  into 
the  theatre,  and  unless  a  critic  would  write 
himself  down  as  both  narrowly  academic  and 
barren  of  social  consciousness  he  must  study 


820  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

the  playhouse  no  less  as  a  social  force  than  as 
an  aesthetic  problem,  and  no  less  important  to 
him  than  the  oldest  classic  or  the  latest  drama 
by  Pinero  or  Sudermann  should  be  the  moving- 
picture  dramas,  the  vaudeville  entertainments, 
the  burlesque  "  shows  "  which  daily  appeal  to 
a  vastly  larger  and  vastly  less  sophisticated 
portion  of  the  public,  including  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  impressionable  boys  and  girls. 
They  are  not  important  to  him  as  a  problem 
in  aesthetics,  but  they  are  of  tremendous  con- 
sequence as  a  social  force.  Until  their  force 
is  recognized,  their  many  dangerous  and  even 
debasing  qualities  made  known,  and  something 
better  substituted  in  their  place  by  an  awak- 
ened public  conscience,  we  have  but  illy  done 
our  duty  in  the  long  fight  for  civic  improve- 
ment. It  should  be  the  task  of  the  dramatic 
critic  to  aid  in  this  fight.  If  he  confines  his 
attention  alone  to  the  aesthetic  problems  of 
the  drama  in  the  so-called  "  first-class  the- 
atres," he  is,  passively  at  least,  retarding 
progress,  delaying  the  time  when  the  com- 
munity will  use  the  theatre,  as  it  uses  the 
school,  the  library,  and  the  playground,  for 
an  agent  of  righteousness,  of  mental  and 
moral  health. 

It  should  be  needless  to  point  out  the  uni- 
versality of  the  dramatic  instinct,  which  in- 
cludes   the    instinct   to    find    satisfaction   and 


•AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  321 

imaginative  release  in  witnessing  stage  repre- 
sentations. Tlie  "  make  believe  "  of  children, 
the  romantic  fervors  of  adolescence  at  the 
play,  the  tremendous  patronage  of  the  the- 
atre by  all  classes  of  adults,  attest  it.  Books, 
by  comparison,  appeal  to  but  few  people.  The 
appeal  of  the  theatre  is  vivid,  direct,  unmis- 
takable. There  is  a  glamour  about  it  like 
nothing  else.  It  assaults  the  eye,  the  ear,  the 
imagination,  simultaneously.  The  child's  fancy 
is  stirred  to  run  riot  even  by  a  moving  pic- 
ture. The  youth  is  moved  in  the  playhouse 
to  amorous  dreams  or  fired  with  heroism  and 
romance.  The  adult  finds  a  refuge  from  the 
dullness  of  existence,  or,  sometimes,  guidance 
and  idealism.  And,  conversely,  the  theatre  is 
equally  potent  for  evil  suggestion.  Yet  we 
have  done  next  to  nothing  to  control  this 
dynamic  force  in  the  life  of  the  community, 
to  direct  it  wisely,  to  utilize  it.  We  have 
left  the  theatre  entirely  in  the  hands  of 
men  who  conducted  it  for  their  profit,  not 
ours;  and  we  are  only  beginning  to  realize 
our  error. 

Curiously  enough,  this  realization  was 
brought  about  by  the  much  maligned  moving 
pictures.  The  five  and  ten  cent  moving-pic- 
ture theatre  is  now  a  national  institution. 
There  are  said  to  be  almost  ten  thousand  of 
them  in  the  United  States,  two  hundred  on 


S»2  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

Manhattan  Island  alone.  In  the  cities  they 
largely  flourish  in  the  poorer  quarters.  Out  in 
the  smaller  centres  they  have  supplied  nightly 
amusement  for  all  classes  of  the  community. 
At  first  they  were  opened  in  frequently  un- 
sanitary rooms,  and  the  quality  of  the  pictures 
shown  was  pretty  bad,  murder,  revenge,  and 
especially  marital  infidelity  (supplied  by  the 
French  manufacturers)  being  the  favorite 
themes.  The  settlement  workers  and  school 
teachers  in  New  York  saw  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  children  flocking  daily  to  these 
theatres,  spending  there  the  pennies  they  for- 
merly saved  for  candy.  The  juvenile  courts 
were  full  of  cases  where  crime  had  been  di- 
rectly incited  by  the  lurid  films. 

Finally  Mr.  John  Collier,  of  the  People's 
Institute  in  New  York,  with  the  co-operation 
of  the  picture  manufacturers,  organized  a 
censorship  committee.  The  manufacturers 
co-operated  because  they  dreaded  the  public 
outcry  against  them,  and  agreed  to  put  out 
only  such  films  as  the  censorship  committee 
approved.  This  committee  has  now  been  ac- 
tive for  two  years.  It  is  absolutely  unofficial, 
and  yet  it  is  able  to-day  to  state  that  ninety 
per  cent  of  all  the  moving  pictures  publicly 
shown  in  the  United  States  have  passed  its 
inspection.  Fifty  per  cent  of  the  censored 
films  are  to-day  of  educational  value,  such  as 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  323 

pictures  of  great  parades,  or  air-ship  flights, 
or  scenes  from  famous  plays,  often  acted  by- 
well-known  players,  or  films  with  direct  and 
decent  dramatic  appeal.  Thus  was  the  first 
active  and  successful  effort  made  to  supervise 
the  influence  of  the  cheap  theatre,  especially 
over  the  young. 

The  moving-picture  theatres  on  Manhattan 
Island  alone  can  house  about  one  million  eight 
hundred  thousand  people  a  week.  The  Child 
Welfare  Committee  estimates  that  the  weekly 
attendance  of  boys  and  girls  under  eighteen  is 
four  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  many  more 
than  attend  Sunday-school  in  New  York,  for 
example.  This  vast  horde  of  children  comes 
fromi  the  poorer  classes.  The  cheap  moving- 
picture  theatre  is  their  refuge,  their  mental 
excitement,  and  their  chief  imaginative  stimu- 
lant, as  it  often  is,  as  well,  for  the  adults.  To 
take  the  moving-picture  show  away  from  them 
would  be  the  height  of  folly.  It  is  vastly 
better  that  their  minds  should  be  active  in  fol- 
lowing the  fate  of  a  character  in  a  moving- 
picture  drama  than  that  they  should  not  be 
stimulated  at  all.  The  crux  of  the  problem 
lies  not  in  taking  away  what  they  have,  but 
in  supplying  them  with  something  better,  better 
first  in  the  moving-picture  theatres  and  the 
other  cheap  places  of  amusement  if  possible, 
and  later,  as  public  sentiment  is  aroused  to  the 


S24.  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

gravity  of  the  situation,  in  true  theatres  built 
and  endowed  for  the  purpose. 

Half  the  moving-picture  theatres  now  fur- 
nish   vaudeville    betw^een    the    exhibitions    of 
films.      In   some    instances   this   vaudeville   is 
coarse  beyond  words,  chiefly  in  theatres  along 
Broadway,    the    worst    example    having   been 
furnished  in  a  theatre  owned  by  two  members 
of  the  Theatrical  Syndicate.     But  in  the  ma- 
jority of  houses,  in  New  York  at  least,  it  is 
merely  crass,  crude,  and  common.     Over  this 
vaudeville  the  unofficial  censorship  committee 
has  no  control.     The  four  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  children  weekly  listen  to  silly  senti- 
mental songs,  atrociously  sung,  or  songs  that 
are  stupidly  vulgar,  and  the  only  music  they 
learn  to  know,  outside  of  school,  is  this  un- 
speakable  stuff.     Their  theatrical   inspiration 
comes  from  the  twitching,  wordless,  mechan- 
ical film  on  a  screen,  and  with  it  is  associated 
no  beauty  of  language,  no  charm  of  music,  no 
glamour  of  fancy,  —  only  the  din  of  a  jan- 
gling   piano    and    the    raucous    scream    of    a 
coarse  man  or  woman  bawling  the  inane  words 
of   a    "  popular    song "    to   a   tune   of   pitiful 
mediocrity.      That    is    the    only    stimulus    the 
theatre  gives  to  four  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand   impressionable    children    in    New    York 
City  every  week,  four  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand children  eager  and  hungry  for  theatrical 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  325 

pleasure,  ripe  alike  for  the  best  or  the  worst    K^^ 
appeal  the  stage  can  make.  J 

While  moving  pictures  claim  the  attention 
of  nearly  half  a  million  children  on  Manhattan 
Island   each   week,   burlesque   and   vaudeville, 
according  to  the  estimate  of  the  Child  Wel- 
fare  Committee,   claim  the  attention  of  two 
hundred  and  fifty-six  thousand  more.     Over 
burlesque   and   vaudeville   there   is   absolutely 
no  control,  either  official  or  otherwise,  and  for 
the   most   part   both    forms    of   entertainment 
to-day  are  absolutely  unfit  for  children,  and 
frequently  demoralizing  to  adults.    The  appeal 
of  burlesque  is  frankly  sexual,  in  the  grossest 
sense,  and  the  appeal  of  vaudeville  is  often 
so.    Wlien  it  is  not,  it  is  coarse  and  common. 
About  twenty  per   cent  of   the   audiences   of 
burlesque  in  New  York  City  is  composed  of 
boys   under    eighteen   years   of   age.      Fortu- 
nately, the  girls  do  not  frequent  this  species 
of  play.     The  thinly  veiled  lewdness   of   the 
posters   which   disfigure   our   city  bill-boards, 
advertising    these    burlesque    ''  shows,"    very 
fairly  represents  the  type  of  play  disclosed  in 
the  theatres.    There  is  much  crude  "  comedy  " 
and  cheap  horse  play,  but  the  chief  appeal  is 
sexual.    To  watch  the  stolid  faces  of  the  men 
in  the  audience  while  the  routine  story  of  the 
play  is  progressing,  to  see  the  wave  of  interest 
and  alertness  sweep  over  them  when  a  sex 


826  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

appeal  is  put  forward,  and  to  see  hanging 
over  the  rail  of  the  gallery  the  faces  of  in- 
numerable boys,  subjected  in  the  foul  air  to 
influences  fouler  still,  is  one  of  the  most  dis- 
heartening spectacles  the  city  affords. 

There  was  a  time  when  vaudeville  was  de- 
scribed by  an  optimistic  management  as  "  re- 
fined." It  has  long  since  ceased  to  merit  the 
adjective,  though  parents  have  not  ceased  from 
taking  their  children  to  witness  it,  nor  young 
men  and  women  ceased  from  seeking  it  to- 
gether for  their  evening's  diversion.  It  never, 
of  course,  had  any  sustained  appeal  to  the  at- 
tention, w^hich  is  one  source  of  its  popularity, 
and  it  never  was  possessed  of  imaginative 
charm.  But  for  children  it  once,  in  greater 
degree  than  at  present,  held  the  charm  of  acro- 
batic exhibition  and  the  mystery  of  sleight  of 
hand,  while  for  older  persons  there  was  the 
real  artistry  of  such  performers  as  Miss  Loftus 
and  Chevalier.  Recently  we  have  seen  Harry 
Lauder  in  vaudeville,  but  he  has  been  a  rare 
exception.  The  "  head  liners,"  as  the  leading 
performers  are  called,  have  been  **  diving 
Venuses,"  daringly  disrobed,  English  concert- 
hall  singers  of  coarse  songs,  men  and  women 
from  Paris  (perhaps)  giving  an  exhibition  of 
utter  depravity,  undressed  dancers  in  imita- 
tion of  the  females  who  gyrated  in  our  con- 
cert halls  a  season  or  two  ago  under  the  veiled 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  327 

excuse  (and  that  was  the  only  thing  veiled) 
of  "  interpreting "  musical  masterpieces,  and 
the  like.  The  rank  and  file  of  the  other  per- 
formers are  usually  not  indecent,  —  they  are 
merely  hopelessly  crass  and  common.  They 
sing  tawdry  songs,  they  crack  ancient  jests, 
they  dance  clumsy  dances  to  the  bang,  bang, 
bang  of  a  clumsy  band  —  and  that  is  vaude- 
ville. Thousands  of  children  and  young  people 
nightly  find  their  theatrical  pleasure  in  wit- 
nessing it.  It  is  their  relief,  after  the  day, 
from  grinding  toil.  It  is  their  "  other  world," 
their  refuge.  Yet  it  holds  nothing  better  than 
the  world  they  know.  It  is  noisy,  coarse, 
cheap,  tawdry.  It  cannot  truly  stimulate  their 
fancy,  call  out  their  imagination,  lead  them 
to  anything  better ;  it  cannot  help  them,  it  can 
only  deaden  their  senses.  It  is  of  less  value, 
indeed,  than  the  moving  pictures,  which  often 
have  considerable  dramatic  ingenuity  and  edu- 
cational interest.  It  is  one  of  those  hopeless 
things  that  seem  so  pathetically  to  hedge  the 
lives  of  the  masses. 

In  our  so-called  "  first-class "  theatres,  of 
course,  practically  nothing  at  all  is  ofifered  to 
interest  or  stimulate  our  children.  No  less 
under  the  control  of  private  men  for  private 
gain  than  the  poorer  theatres,  the  two-dollar 
liouses  more  completely  neglect  the  young  be- 
cause their  patronage  is  less  a  factor  in  com- 


828  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

mercial  prosperity.  New  York,  to  be  sure, 
has  its  Hippodrome  with  Marcelhne,  the  in- 
comparable clown.  In  days  past  we  have  seen 
the  success  of  "  Little  Lord  Fauntleroy,"  of 
*'  The  Little  Princess,"  and  of  Mr.  Barrie's 
*'  Peter  Pan."  But  these  are  rare  exceptions. 
When  Mr.  Conried  conducted  a  German  the- 
atre in  New  York,  he  used  to  give  children's 
plays  every  afternoon  during  the  holidays. 
But  we  care  less,  it  would  appear,  for  our 
children  than  the  Germans  do  for  theirs,  or 
even  the  English.  We  leave  them  out  of  the 
reckoning  in  the  theatre.  The  joys  the  old 
Boston  Museum  used  periodically  to  provide 
for  the  youngsters,  in  the  days  when  that  in- 
stitution was  a  force  in  a  homogeneous  com- 
munity, are  no  longer  provided  anywhere. 
This  is  chiefly  significant  as  showing  how  little 
we  reckon  the  value  of  the  theatre  in  training 
the  imagination  of  the  child,  for  the  children 
of  those  who  patronize  the  two-dollar  play- 
house may  justly  be  supposed  to  have  other 
spurs  to  their  fancy  than  the  theatre.  They 
go  to  good  schools  where  athletic  games  are 
provided;  they  are  taught  at  home  to  play; 
they  have  books  in  plenty,  and  from  Scott  and 
Stevenson  draw  on  the  wells  of  eternal  ro- 
mance. If,  to  be  sure,  they  had  also  theatri- 
cal entertainments  suited  to  their  years,  the 
next    generation    of    theatre-goers    would    be 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  329 

more  imaginative,  more  responsive  to  the  ap- 
peals of  poetry  and  the  higher  ranges  of 
drama.  But  their  case  is,  nevertheless,  not 
the  pressing  one.  Where  the  theatre  is  crim- 
inally negligent  in  its  duty  as  a  social  servant 
is  among  the  children  and  young  people  of 
the  masses,  who  know  no  other  recreation,  who 
turn  to  the  playhouse  in  pathetic  hordes,  with 
a  pathetic  instinct  to  find  there  emotional  and 
spiritual  bread,  and  who  are  rewarded  with 
a  stone. 

Miss  Jane  Addams,  in  her  "  Spirit  of  Youth 
and  the  City  Streets,"  says: 

"  '  Going  to  the  show  '  for  thousands  of  young 
people  in  every  industrial  city  is  the  only  possible 
road  to  the  realms  of  mystery  and  romance;  the 
theatre  is  the  only  place  where  they  can  satisfy 
that  craving  for  a  conception  of  life  higher  than 
that  which  the  actual  world  offers  them.  In  a  very 
real  sense  the  drama  and  the  drama  alone  per- 
forms for  them  the  office  of  art,  as  is  clearly  re- 
vealed in  their  blundering  demand  stated  in  many 
forms  for  *  a  play  unlike  life.'  The  theatre  be- 
comes to  them  a  '  veritable  house  of  dreams,'  in- 
finitely more  real  than  the  noisy  streets  and  the 
crowded   factories. 

"  This  first  simple  demand  upon  the  theatre  for 
romance  is  closely  allied  to  one  more  complex, 
which  might  be  described  as  a  search  for  solace 
and  distraction  in  those  moments  of  first  awaken- 
ing from  the  glamour  of  a  youth's  interpretation 


830  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

of  life  to  the  sterner  realities  which  are  thrust 
upon  his  consciousness.  These  perceptions  which 
inevitably  *  close  around  '  and  imprison  the  spirit 
of  youth  are  perhaps  never  so  grim  as  in  the  case 
of  the  wage-earning  child.  We  can  all  recall  our 
own  moments  of  revolt  against  life's  actualities, 
our  reluctance  to  admit  that  all  life  was  to  be  as 
unheroic  and  uneventful  as  that  which  we  saw 
about  us ;  it  was  too  unbearable  that  '  this  was 
all  there  was  '  and  we  tried  every  possible  avenue 
of  escape.  As  we  made  an  effort  to  believe,  in 
spite  of  what  we  saw,  that  life  was  noble  and  har- 
monious, as  we  stubbornly  clung  to  poesy  in  con- 
tradiction to  the  testimony  of  our  senses,  so  we 
see  thousands  of  young  people  thronging  the  thea- 
tres bent  in  their  turn  upon  the  same  quest.  The 
drama  provides  a  transition  between  the  romantic 
conceptions  which  they  vainly  struggle  to  keep  in- 
tact and  life's  cruelties  and  trivialities  which  they 
refuse  to  admit.  A  child  whose  imagination  has 
been  cultivated  is  able  to  do  this  for  himself 
through  reading  and  reverie,  but  for  the  over- 
worked city  youth  of  meager  education  perhaps 
nothing  but  the  theatre  is  able  to  perform  this  im- 
portant office." 

Again  she  writes,  of  the  moving-picture 
houses  (in  which  conditions  have  been  greatly 
bettered  since  her  book  was  issued)  : 

"  At  present,  however,  most  improbable  tales 
hold  the  attention  of  the  youth  of  the  city  night 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  331 

after  night,  and  feed  his  starved  imagination  as 
nothing  else  succeeds  in  doing.  In  addition  to  these 
fascinations,  the  five-cent  theatre  is  also  fast  be- 
coming the  general  social  center  and  club  house  in 
many  crowded  neighborhoods.  It  is  easy  of  ac- 
cess from  the  street,  the  entire  family  of  parents 
and  children  can  attend  for  a  comparatively  small 
sum  of  money,  and  the  performance  lasts  for  at 
least  an  hour;  and,  in  some  of  the  humbler  the- 
atres, the  spectators  are  not  disturbed  for  a  second 
hour. 

"  The  room  wdiich  contains  the  mimic  stage  is 
small  and  cozy,  and  less  formal  than  the  regular 
theatre,  and  there  is  much  more  gossip  and  social 
life  as  if  the  foyer  and  pit  were  mingled.  The 
very  darkness  of  the  room,  necessary  for  an  ex- 
hibition of  the  films,  is  an  added  attraction  to 
many  young  people,  for  whom  the  space  is  filled 
with  the  glamour  of  love  making. 

"  Hundreds  of  young  people  attend  these  five-cent 
theatres  every  evening  in  the  week,  including  Sun- 
day, and  what  is  seen  and  heard  there  becomes  the 
sole  topic  of  conversation,  forming  the  ground 
pattern  of  their  social  life.  That  mutual  under- 
standing which  in  another  social  circle  is  provided 
by  books,  travel  and  all  the  arts,  is  here  compressed 
into  the  topics  suggested  by  the  play." 

In  light  of  these  words  from  a  woman  who,  if 
anyone,  can  speak  out  of  the  fullness  of  knowl- 
edge, and  in  light  of  even  the  most  superficial 
investigation  of  the  character  of  entertainment 


332  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

offered  in  our  burlesque,  vaudeville,  and  even 
moving-picture  theatres,  a  critic  would  be 
very  blind  indeed  if  he  did  not  realize 
that  the  problem  of  the  theatre  in  America 
to-day  stretches  far  beyond  any  boundaries 
of  Broadway,  any  little  squabbles  of  "  Syndi- 
cates "  and  "  Independents,"  and  points  directly 
to  some  form  of  organized  control  and  prac- 
tical endowment  in  the  playhouses  of  the 
people. 

Practically  every  experiment  which  has  been 
intelligently  made  to  interest  the  masses  in  the 
better  things  of  the  stage  has  met  with  sub- 
stantial encouragement;  that  is,  the  children, 
the  young  people,  and  even  the  adults  have 
shown  themselves  sensitive  to  its  merits  and 
eager  for  its  ministrations.  I  have  myself 
seen  a  performance  of  "  Hamlet  "  given  by 
young  Italian  boys  and  girls  in  a  New  York 
Settlement,  which  was  remarkably  well  done 
and  which  created  more  interest  and  enthu- 
siasm in  the  neighborhood  than  the  most  popu- 
lar moving-picture  film.  The  People's  Insti- 
tute has  done  what  it  could  in  New  York  to 
])nt  good  plays  before  the  one  hundred  thou- 
sand or  more  people  whom  it  serves,  by  secur- 
ing half  rates  for  them  at  such  Broadway 
playhouses  as  were  willing  to  make  the  re- 
duction or  were  offering  suitable  dramas.  It 
is  sirmificant  that  "  The  Servant  in  the  House  " 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  333 

and  "  Peter  Pan  "  both  sold  thousands  of  seats 
to  the  People's  Institute  before  "  the  two-dol- 
lar public "  discovered  the  merits  of  these 
plays.  It  is  significant,  also,  that  when  Mr. 
Sothern  and  Miss  Marlowe  play  Shakespeare 
at  the  old  Academy  of  Music,  far  down  town 
on  the  border  of  the  East  Side,  they  do  an 
enormous  business,  undreamed  of  on  Broad- 
way. Recently  a  children's  theatre  was  started 
on  the  East  Side.  It  ended  disastrously,  at 
least  for  certain  little  girls  of  the  company, 
because  these  high-strung  and  impressionable 
children,  especially  the  self-assertive  Jews,  are 
not  ready  for  so  much  self-exploitation.  Mass 
play  only  is  permitted  in  the  schools,  where 
even  solo  dances  are  wisely  eliminated.  But 
a  theatre  for  children  and  a  children's  theatre 
are  two  different  things.  A  theatre  both  for 
children,  for  young  people,  and  for  adults, 
wisely,  patiently,  and  artistically  administered 
in  all  our  crowded  centres  of  urban  popula- 
tion, at  prices  to  compete  with  the  moving- 
picture  theatres,  would  meet  with  an  instant 
and  hearty  response,  and  would  be  an  incal- 
culable boon  to  the  immediate  community,  and 
so,  by  making  better  citizens  of  the  growing 
masses,  to  the  community  at  large. 

It  is  pathetic  enough  to  hear  the  children 
of  the  well-to-do  singing  the  inane  songs  from 
the  latest  ''  musical  comedy,"  which  their  par- 


334  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

ents  teach  them,  apparently  under  the  supposi- 
tion that  it  is  smart,  or  which  they  uncon- 
sciously pick  up  because  it  is  the  only  music 
they  hear  at  home.  But  these  children  will 
go  to  college,  to  the  opera,  to  symphony  con- 
certs, and  learn  better  —  perhaps.  It  is 
pathetic  enough,  year  in  and  year  out,  to  see 
never  a  child  in  a  Broadway  theatre,  the 
wonderland  of  drama  opening  its  doors  to 
them,  never  even  a  touch  of  childish  fancy 
on  the  stage.  But  they,  at  home  with  their 
nurses,  hear  Grimm  and  Andersen  read  to 
them,  and  later  they  will  read  Stevenson 
and  Scott  and  Dickens,  they  will  play  in 
the  country  under  the  expanding  influence 
of  Nature,  they  will  hunt  and  fish  and 
tramp. 

But  how  about  the  children  of  the  poor, 
especially  in  our  city  slums?  They  have  too 
often  no  playground  but  the  street,  no  home 
worth  the  name;  no  fairy  tales  are  read  to 
them,  no  influences  are  at  work  to  expand 
their  imaginations,  to  develop  their  perceptive 
faculties  for  beauty  and  mystery  and  charm; 
no  music  will  ever  come  to  their  ears  but  the 
rag-time  of  the  street.  Except  in  so  far  as 
the  public  school  can  mould  them,  and  the 
cheap  theatre,  their  imaginations  are  un- 
touched. These  two  forces,  the  public  school 
and  the  cheap  theatre,  are  the  two  forces  of 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  335 

greatest  power  in  the  lives  of  the  poorer  chil- 
dren in  American  cities  to-day.  And  after 
the  brief  period  of  schooling,  ending  in  almost 
all  cases  at  fourteen  years,  the  cheap  theatre 
is  alone  in  undisputed  sway.  We  regulate  the 
schools.  But  as  yet  we  have  done  nothing, 
save  in  the  single  instance  of  the  voluntary 
moving-picture  censorship,  to  regulate  the 
theatres,  and  less  than  nothing  to  provide 
better  theatres.  We  have  not  done  it  because 
we  do  not  realize  as  yet  its  importance.  It 
is  high  time  the  realization  came. 

It  is  easy  to  say  that  the  moving  pictures, 
as  at  present  presented,  probably  do  little 
harm,  save  to  the  eyesight.  They  may  even 
do  much  good,  in  lieu  of  anything  better. 
But  to  claim  for  them  anything  like  an  ideal 
form  of  dramatic  stimulation  on  the  minds 
of  young  children  is  the  height  of  folly.  For 
the  crude  vulgarity  or  noisy  cheapness  of  the 
vaudeville  interpolations  there  can  be  no  de- 
fense. For  the  raw  sex  appeal  of  the  bur- 
lesque *'  shows "  there  is  no  defense,  either. 
These  "  shows  "  should  be  under  official  super- 
vision, at  the  least,  and  boys  beneath  the  age 
of  eighteen  forbidden,  perhaps,  to  attend  their 
performance,  just  as  we  forbid  the  sale  of 
liquors  to  minors.  If  the  present  laws  do  not 
permit  of  such  a  course,  the  laws  should  be 
altered.     In   the   vaudeville   theatres  perhaps 


336  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

the  most  pathetic  feature  is  the  large  number 
of  young  men  and  girls  extracting  from  this 
unspeakably  inane  and  crude  and  cruelly  and 
vulgarly  prosaic  form  of  entertainment  nightly 
their  one  spice  of  freedom,  of  excitement,  of 
release  from  sweat-shop  toil  and  the  dull  toll 
of  day.  Almost  as  much  as  our  treatment 
of  the  children,  our  treatment  of  these  young 
people  is  a  bitter  sin. 

For  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  these 
young  people,  even  more,  perhaps,  than  the 
children,  know  the  cheap  theatre  as  almost 
their  sole  means  of  recreation,  cannot  be  re- 
strained from  attending  it,  find  in  it  their 
standards  of  speech,  of  conduct,  of  taste.  Not 
only  Miss  Addams  but  every  worker  among 
the  masses  has  testified  over  and  over  again 
to  the  enormous  influence  of  the  cheap  play- 
house in  urban  life.  It  reaches  the  young, 
and  even  the  old,  as  nothing  else  can.  Its 
influence  is  irresistible.  It  ought  to  be  our 
most  potent  weapon  for  progress.  And  we 
permit  its  administration  to  remain  entirely 
in  the  hands  of  ignorant  and  grasping  indi- 
viduals; we  permit  it  to  be  a  weapon  for  the 
perpetuation  of  crassncss,  of  vulgarity,  of  bad 
taste;  we  forego  entirely  its  aid  in  reaching, 
through  the  senses  and  the  fancy,  the  lives 
and  hearts  of  our  young. 

Would  these  four  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  337 

sand  children  who  go  to  the  picture  shows  in 
New  York  every  week  go  to  "  Peter  Pan  " 
if  it  were  presented  in  their  neighborhood  for 
ten  cents?  Try  them  and  see!  Would  these 
young  men  and  girls  who  come  in  from  the 
dirt  and  smell  and  prying  eyes  of  the  street 
to  make  love  in  the  darkened  picture  theatre, 
or  who,  in  their  poor,  pathetic  best,  trip  to 
a  vaudeville  show  because  it  is  an  outing,  be- 
cause it  is  lively  and  a  relief,  attend  a  per- 
formance of  "  Romeo  and  Juliet  "  or  "  Twelfth 
Night,"  if  that,  instead,  were  within  their 
means?  Again,  try  them!  Let  us  give  them 
the  benefit  of  the  doubt  —  a  doubt  which 
every  sign  makes  less  a  doubt  —  and  assume 
that  it  is  not,  for  most  of  them,  the  blatant 
crudeness,  the  horrible  music,  the  vulgar  pros- 
iness  of  the  vaudeville  show  which  at  first 
appeals,  but  its  sense  of  difference  from  their 
lives,  its  glamour  of  foot-lights,  its  delicious 
flavor  of  an  outing,  of  a  good  time.  The 
romance  of  budding  sex  weaves  its  spell  no 
less  around  them  than  around  us,  and  in  that 
mystic  period  many  things  may  be  glorified, 
and,  for  them,  the  rankest  sentimental  ballad 
fraught  with  irresistible  allure. 

But  what  an  "  other  world  "  to  give  them 
at  this  period,  when,  if  ever,  their  souls  may 
be  kindled  to  better  things ;  what  a  crass  and 
cruel  influence  to  surround  them  with,  when 


338  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

their  senses  are  alert,  their  emotions  budding, 
their  hearts  ready  for  the  great  adventure  of 
existence!  They  have  no  Shelley  and  Keats 
to  read  at  home,  no  piano  whereon  Schumann 
and  Schubert  can  be  played,  no  garden  paths 
between  the  roses  down  behind  the  house  to 
the  river,  no  canoe  in  which  to  drift  over 
moonlit  waters.  Few  enough  chivalric  in- 
stincts are  alive  in  the  air  around  them,  few 
enough  domestic  influences  make  for  delicacy 
and  restraint  and  charm.  In  their  daily  lives 
there  is  no  romance.  In  their  daily  lives  there 
is  no  food  for  thought  to  feed  on,  nor  for 
dreams.  One  and  all  they  crowd  to  the  the- 
atre for  what  joy  and  wonder  they  can  get 
out  of  life  and  their  own  new  relations  — 
and  are  met  with  a  moving  picture,  a  vaude- 
ville show,  a  sickly  sentimental  ballad,  or 
something  worse! 

Fancy,  instead,  a  theatre  where  they  might 
go  to  witness  a  good  performance  of  "  Romeo 
and  Juliet,"  or  "  As  You  Like  It,"  or  even  of 
some  modern  play  where  finer  standards  than 
theirs  prevailed,  where  speech  was  more  re- 
fined, where  there  was  a  glamour  of  poetry 
or  true  romance!  Here  beauty  of  dress  and 
scenery  would  meet  their  eyes.  Here  true 
music  would  greet  their  ears.  Here  they 
would  find  themselves  lifted  into  a  story, 
swept  along  by  its  current,  taken  truly  into 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  339 

a  different  world  from  that  of  their  daily 
lives,  a  better  world,  a  more  wonderful  world, 
a  world  where  new  emotions  swayed  them, 
new  vistas  of  expectation  and  experience 
opened  out,  new  thoughts  stirred.  Here,  in 
place  of  the  voiceless,  jumping  pantomime  of 
moving  pictures,  they  would  find  the  charm 
of  spoken  voice  and  lovely  cadence;  here,  in- 
stead of  screaming,  aimless  vaudeville  inanity, 
they  would  find  the  charm  of  a  sustained  and 
fascinating  story,  the  charm  of  mystery  and 
romance.  Charm  —  that  is  the  word.  There 
is  no  charm  in  their  daily  lives;  at  present 
there  is  no  charm  in  their  cheap  entertain- 
ments, which  are  all  they  have,  and  to  which 
they  flock  with  pathetic  eagerness.  Until  the 
heart  of  youth  (and  the  heart  of  manhood) 
has  ceased  to  know  even  the  dull  craving  for 
charm,  until  charm  has  ceased  to  be  a  potent 
necessity  in  the  life  of  the  race  if  that  life  is 
to  be  happy  and  righteous  and  useful,  then, 
and  not  until  then,  will  the  need  cease  for  a 
better  theatre  for  the  masses,  and  their  dumb 
willingness  to  respond  to  such  a  theatre  cease 
also. 

Some  four  million  dollars  were  spent  by 
certain  rich  men  to  establish  the  New  Theatre 
in  New  York,  where  plays  are  presented  at 
prices  prohibitive  to  the  masses,  save  on  some 
half-dozen  occasions  a  year,  in  an  aristocratic 


340  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

atmosphere,  and  at  a  distance  so  great  from 
those  whom  a  truly  democratic  theatre  should 
serve  that  the  bulk  of  the  masses  probably 
are  not  even  aware  of  its  existence.  There 
is  room,  of  course,  for  the  New  Theatre,  but 
its  purpose  is,  after  all,  narrowly  aesthetic. 
Social  service  is  no  part  of  it.  The  People's 
Institute  in  New  York  does  what  it  can  to 
send  school  children,  clerks,  department-store 
girls,  and  others  to  the  first-class  theatres  at 
reduced  rates;  but  these  rates  are  still  not 
low  enough,  the  Broadway  theatres  are  not 
properly  administered  for  children,  and  they 
are  too  far  removed  from  the  community  to 
be  served.  In  New  York  the  start  toward  a 
true  theatre  for  the  masses  could  probably 
best  be  made  by  equipping  the  People's  Insti- 
tute with  a  playhouse  on  the  East  Side,  and 
an  endowment  fund  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  company.  From  the  success  of  that  the- 
atre other  theatres  might  result,  both  in  New 
York  and  other  cities.  Ultimately  such  the- 
atres should,  of  course,  be  under  public  con- 
trol, just  as  there  should  be  official  censor- 
ship of  moving  pictures,  burlesque,  vaudeville, 
and  other  cheap  amusement  directly  affect- 
ing the  lives  and  characters  of  children. 
But  the  start  will  probably  have  to  be 
made  through  private  generosity,  just  as  pri- 
vate   generosity    has    already    equipped    the 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  341 

People's  Institute  with  a  Symphony  Orches- 
tra (whose  concerts,  by  the  way,  are  plenti- 
fully patronized). 

Such  a  theatre,  to  be  of  real  service,  should 
compete  in  price  as  well  as  propinquity  with 
the  moving  pictures  and  vaudeville.  It  should 
be  gay,  animated,  and  hospitable  in  appear- 
ance. It  should  aim  to  give  matinees  of  plays 
suited  to  children  and  evening  performances 
of  poetic  plays  suited  to  the  young,  as  well 
as  of  modern  dramas  of  contemporary  life 
which  deal  soundly  with  moral  or  political 
issues,  giving  these  eager  new  Americans  who 
fill  our  slums  something  to  think  about  and 
discuss.  It  should  maintain  a  good,  though 
naturally  not  an  extraordinary,  company  of 
actors.  Probably  it  could  rely  on  such  gen- 
erous players  as  Mr.  Sothern  and  Miss  Mar- 
lowe, Mrs.  Fiske,  Henry  Miller,  and  William 
Faversham  for  generous  aid,  they  coming 
down  for  visiting  performances  once  or  twice 
a  year.  In  this  way  the  best  we  have  in 
drama  could,  in  the  space  of  a  season,  be 
brought  to  the  masses.  Such  a  theatre  could 
not  be  self-supporting,  and  should,  indeed,  be 
absolutely  free  from  any  need  to  attempt  self- 
support.  But  experiment  would  show  that  the 
annual  loss,  because  the  theatre  would  be  filled 
at  all  performances,  would  be  inconsiderable 
in  comparison  with  the  results  achieved.     It 


842  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

would  be  a  splendid  charity,  and  ultimately, 
in  every  large  city,  it  should  be  a  civic 
duty. 

"  The  theatre  is  irresistible  —  organize  the 
theatre,"  said  Matthew  Arnold.  The  theatre 
is  indeed  irresistible.  Nearly  half  a  million 
children  on  Manhattan  Island  weekly  crowd 
the  moving-picture  shows.  A  quarter  of  a 
million  more  go  to  vaudeville  and  burlesque. 
Young  men  and  girls,  old  men  and  women, 
find  their  nightly  recreation,  their  sole  imagi- 
native release,  their  one  not-to-be-surrendered 
joy  of  a  hard  existence,  in  the  cheap  theatres 
of  the  town.  We  build  them  schools,  we  are 
learning  to  provide  them  with  playgrounds 
and  parks,  we  have  already  begun  to  furnish 
them  lectures  and,  tentatively,  a  little  music. 
But  of  equal  importance  with  school  and  recre- 
ation field  as  a  means  of  reaching  the  minds 
and  hearts  of  the  children  and  young  people 
in  our  city  slums,  is  the  cheap  theatre.  Or- 
ganize the  theatre,  then,  supervise  it,  endow 
it.  As  the  new  recreation  field  is  to  the  old 
gutter  in  the  life  of  the  poor  city  child,  as  the 
new  municipal  dance  hall  is  to  the  old  rum- 
shop  *'  dancing  academy,"  conducted  for  pri- 
vate gain  and  fostering  coarseness  and  vice, 
so  will  be  the  endowed  and  artistically  ad- 
ministered theatre,  where  Shakespeare  and 
the    classics,    children's    fairy   plays    and   the 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  343 

best  of  modern  drama  are  presented  at  cheap 
rates,  to  the  present  moving-picture  shows, 
the  brutahzing  vaudevihe,  and  the  sexually 
demoralizing  burlesque.  Such  a  theatre  is 
scarcely  less  needed  in  every  city  than  school- 
houses  and  playgrounds,  and  until  this  fact 
is  realized  and  the  proper  action  taken,  we 
have  left  unused  one  of  our  most  potent 
weapons  for  civic  improvement. 


THE   UNCONCEITED   DRAMATISTS' 
CLUB 

Should  anyone  so  unfortunate  as  to  have  had 
a  playwright  in  his  family  chance  to  read  the 
title  of  this  paper,  doubtless  he  will  exclaim, 
**The  Unconceited  Dramatists'  Club!  But 
where  do  they  find  the  members  ?  "  I  hasten 
at  once  to  state  that  the  club  is  an  extremely 
exclusive  organization,  not  from  any  desire 
on  the  part  of  the  president,  vice-president, 
and  secretary-treasurer  (who  also  compose  the 
executive,  house,  and  membership  committees) 
to  keep  out  candidates  of  whatever  race  or 
stripe,  but  because  the  constitution  of  the  club 
calls  for  one  definite  test  of  admissibility ;  and 
so  far  only  the  president,  vice-president,  and 
secretary-treasurer  have  met  this  test.  Indeed, 
some  doubt  appears  to  exist  in  their  minds 


SU  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

whether  they  have.  At  a  recent  meeting  there 
was  considerable  discussion  about  expelHng 
one  of  the  three  for  non-payment  of  humihty. 
But  no  action  was  taken,  because  the  execu- 
tive committee  could  not  decide  which  one  to 
expel. 

The  club  has,  however,  two  non-professional 
associate  members,  who  are  not  privileged  to 
vote  nor  to  hold  office.  (Neither,  I  might  add, 
were  they  required  to  pass  the  test!)  Their 
only  prerogative  is  to  sign  checks.  They  are 
a  dramatic  critic  and  a  theatrical  manager. 
Such  a  selection  would  seem  still  further  to 
indicate  a  lack  of  confidence  in  themselves  on 
the  part  of  the  three  dramatists  —  a  lack  of 
confidence,  that  is,  in  their  humility,  but  a 
sense  of  possible  confidence  in  their  play- 
writing  powers,  suspended  like  the  sword  of 
Damocles  over  their  heads.  Perhaps  they 
hope  that  with  a  dramatic  critic  on  one  side 
and  a  theatrical  manager  on  the  other  any 
unseemly  enthusiasm  of  theirs  over  the  chil- 
dren of  their  brains  will  be  summarily  wet- 
blanketed.  And  their  hope  is  not  without 
justification. 

The  club  meets  Monday  nights,  on  Broad- 
way, in  convenient  spots  adjacent  to  the  the- 
atres. This  is  a  dangerous  practice,  but,  as 
the  president  recently  remarked,  "  Any  man 
can    be    unconccited    about    his    plays    if    he 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  345 

doesn't  see  the  other  fellow's  but  stays  at 
home  and  reads  Ibsen." 

"  Would  you  read  Ibsen  if  you  stayed  at 
home  ?  "  queried  the  vice-president. 

But  the  president  took  refuge  behind  the 
dignity  of  his  office,  and  the  secretary-treasurer 
contributed  this  bit  of  crystal-clear  humility: 
"  I  think  a  great  deal  can  be  learned  from  the 
reading  of  Ibsen." 

"  Do  you  ?  "  said  the  critical  associate  mem- 
ber, with  a  certain  asperity,  known  to  his 
fellows  as  his  cold-storage  manner.  ''  Do  you, 
indeed?  I'm  surprised  that  you  don't  learn 
it,  then." 

"  See  here !  "  began  the  secretary-treasurer, 
with  a  touch  of  temper,  **  if  you  —  " 

"Silence!"  said  the  president,  rapping  his 
glass  on  the  table.  "  Frosty  Face  is  but  ful- 
filling his  duty  as  associate  member." 

"  I  suppose  so,"  said  the  secretary-treasurer, 
"  still,  I  want  to  state  —  " 

*'  No  you  don't,"  said  the  president.  "  You 
want  another  drink." 

And  so  the  talk  was  once  more  that  of  hum- 
ble disciples  of  a  noble  art,  and  if,  from  time 
to  time,  it  was  intimated  that  the  production 
of  the  new  play  across  the  street  had  grave 
defects  due  to  the  ignorance  of  the  man- 
ager, the  stupidity  of  the  players,  and  the 
general  incompetence  of  the  playwright,  still 


346  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

it  was  not  implied  by  any  of  the  three  club 
members  that  he  himself  had  done,  was  doing, 
or  could  do  better.  To  point  out  the  defects 
in  the  work  of  another  is  surely  not  a  sign  of 
conceit  in  one's  self.  Criticism  is  impersonal. 
Or,  at  any  rate,  it  may  be  noted  that  the 
greater  the  artist  the  more  apt  he  is  to  dis- 
cover a  hidden  talent  in  others,  where  the 
ordinary  intelligence  detects  nothing  at  all. 
This  being  so  —  and  the  president  of  the  club 
declares  that  it  is,  and  cites  as  proof  the  fact 
that  William  Dean  Howells,  the  kindly  dean 
of  American  fiction,  has  discovered  the  great 
American  novel  once  a  season  for  the  past 
two  decades  —  then,  say  the  club  members, 
were  they  truly  conceited  they  would  praise, 
not  blame,  just  to  show  that  they  are  great 
artists.  Turning  upon  the  critical  associate 
member,  the  secretary-treasurer  spoke  for  his 
fellows. 

"  With  humbleness,"  he  said,  "  we  volun- 
tarily recognize  our  meek  privilege  of  small 
minds  to  criticise." 

Even  the  critic  for  once  had  nothing  to  say, 
and,  what  is  more  remarkable,  he  did  not  say 
anything. 

But  perhaps  you  are  asking,  what  is  the 
object  of  the  Unconceited  Dramatists'  Club? 
Here  is  section  II  of  the  constitution,  section  I 
concerning  itself  with  the  name: 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  347 

"  Section  11.  The  object  of  this  club  shall  be  to 
encourage  among  all  members  of  the  dramatic  pro- 
fession, but  more  especially  among  playwrights,  the 
rare  virtue  of  humility.  The  motto  of  this  club 
shall  be :  '  One  press  notice  does  not  make  a  Shaw.'  " 

Section  III  may  also,  perhaps,  prove  of 
interest.  It  sets  forth  the  method  of  testing 
members : 

"  Section  III.  Any  candidate  for  admission  to 
this  club  shall  be  required  to  respond  to  the  follow- 
ing question,  and  if  he  fails  to  give  the  correct 
answer  he  shall  be  forcibly  ejected  from  the  club- 
rooms,  nor  shall  his  name  ever  again  be  presented 
for  consideration: 

"  Question.  *  When  did  you  first  feel  this 
Power?' 

"  Correct  answer.     *  Oh,  Rats ! '  " 

The  club  was  founded  by  the  present  presi- 
dent one  morning  at  breakfast,  after  reading 
the  reviews  of  a  play  of  his  produced  the  night 
before.  For  a  long  time  he  was  the  only  mem- 
ber, but  on  a  Tuesday  morning  the  following 
Spring  he  read  the  daily  press,  called  a  meet- 
ing of  himself  and  unanimously  elected  the 
present  secretary-treasurer.  The  present  vice- 
president  received  his  election  before  one  of 
his  plays  had  been  produced.  Having  met 
satisfactorily  the  test  prescribed  by  Section  III 


348  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

of  the  constitution  (though  it  is  rumored  his 
reply  was  couched  in  language  similar  in 
spirit  rather  than  letter  to  the  required  form), 
and  having  further  advanced  the  strong  argu- 
ment that  it  is  much  more  difficult  to  be  un- 
conceited  about  your  play  before  it  is  produced 
than  after,  he  was  duly  admitted  to  the  organ- 
ization. He  has  since  then  seen  a  play  of  his 
own  on  the  boards,  and  has  survived  that  ordeal 
with  a  commendable  stock  of  humility  still  at 
his  command. 

Contrary  to  your  natural  supposition,  the 
three  members  are  all  young.  The  young  are 
not,  as  a  rule,  greatly  given  to  the  pursuit  of 
humility.  Most  of  us  are  humbled  by  our 
achievements  rather  than  our  hopes.  But  the 
stage  is  a  world  unto  itself,  and  as  there  is  no 
assurance  superior  to  that  of  a  young  actress 
except  the  assurance  of  an  old  actor,  so  the 
playwright  persists  to  the  last  in  his  faith  in 
himself,  and  if  the  young  author's  first  untried 
manuscript  seems  to  him  foreordained  to  for- 
tune, his  last  is  "  better  than  Ibsen." 

And  everywhere,  all  over  our  broad  land, 
there  is  passionate  wooing  of  the  dramatic 
Muse.  With  an  ardor  contrary  to  all  tradi- 
tions of  the  establishment,  she  is  wooed  by 
undergraduates  at  Harvard.  At  Yale  Pinero 
is  now  almost  as  highly  regarded  as  Walter 
Camp.     Actors  and  actresses  spend  their  vaca- 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  349 

tions  in  mad  pursuit  and  recall  all  the  effective 
scenes  they  have  ever  played,  to  assist  in  the 
act  of  composition.  Into  newspaper  offices 
flutter  her  garments,  rustle  the  litter  of  copy 
paper  on  the  floor,  and  reporters  rise  and  fol- 
low after.  Novelists,  discontented  with  the 
paltry  returns  on  mere  "  best  sellers,"  which 
reach  only  fifty  or  sixty  editions,  turn  their 
tales  into  plays,  and  doubtless  try  to  take 
Harrison  Fisher's  model  away  from  him,  to 
make  her  the  star.  Even  the  magazine  up- 
lifters  beat  their  muck-rakes  into  stage  prop- 
erties, and  neglect  the  welfare  of  the  nation 
for  the  seductions  of  Melpomene.  In  one 
season  alone  two  thousand  play  manuscripts 
were  read  at  the  New  Theatre,  and  one  thou- 
sand nine  hundred  and  ninety-seven  of  them 
were  rejected.  But  did  those  one  thousand 
nine  hundred  and  ninety-seven  authors  accept 
the  decision  with  humility?  No,  not  one  of 
them,  because  not  one  of  them  was  a  member 
of  the  Unconceited  Dramatists'  Club.  One 
thousand  nine  hundred  and  ninety-six  times 
this  sentence  was  repeated  in  various  sections 
of  the  United  States,  "  Well,  the  New  Theatre 
does  n't  (or,  don't)  know  a  good  play  when  it 
sees  one," 

Now,  while  there  may  be  a  grain  of  truth 
in  this  sentence,  the  individual  cases  in  hand, 
alas,  never  proved  it !    For,  to  speak  with  all  the 


350  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

seriousness  that  the  subject  merits,  it  seems  to 
be  a  psychological  law  of  playwriting  that  the 
cock-sureness  of  the  writer  varies  inversely 
as  the  difficulty  of  the  art.  Why  that  is,  I  can- 
not say.  For  many  years  I  have  sought  in  vain 
the  true  explanation.  I  only  know  from  sad 
experience  that  it  is  so.  If  a  man  takes  it  into 
his  head  that  he  would  like  to  paint  a  picture, 
and  does  paint  a  picture,  he  is  not,  therefore, 
at  once  convinced  that  he  has  committed  a 
second  Sistine  Madonna,  or  is  destined  to 
cause  any  considerable  falling  off  in  the 
demand  for  Corots.  Indeed,  in  the  pictorial, 
plastic,  and  even  the  musical  arts,  a  man  is  pre- 
pared to  pass  through  a  considerable  appren- 
ticeship before  he  calls  himself  an  artist.  But 
if  a  man  commits  four  acts  of  a  drama  to 
paper,  he  is  a  playwright  at  once.  If  he  gets 
them  produced  upon  the  stage,  he  is  a  drama- 
tist. And  if  he  does  it  a  second  time,  and  has 
been  properly  trained  under  the  right  univer- 
sity influences,  he  becomes  a  dramaturge. 
There  is  nothing  higher  than  a  dramaturge. 
The  dramaturge  "  motivates  "  his  plays  before 
he  writes  them.  When  you  see  him  approach- 
ing, run  —  unless  you  have  no  engagement  for 
the  rest  of  the  afternoon.  "  Motivating  "  a 
play  is  a  serious  business.  The  dramaturge 
is  a  serious  person.  If  you  don't  believe  it, 
ask  him. 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  351 

I  once  knew  an  excellent  reporter  who  at  an 
unfortunate  moment  was  sent  to  cover  the 
opening  performance  of  a  play.  The  dramatic 
critic  was  sick,  perhaps,  or  taking  a  holiday  at 
a  moving  picture  show.  This  reporter  returned 
to  his  office  with  the  announcement  that  if  he 

could  n't  write  a  better  play  than ,  he  'd  get 

a  job  in  Brooklyn.  His  opinion  of  the  play, 
thus  rashly  expressed,  was  no  doubt  critically 
sound;  nor  could  he  be  blamed  for  not  wish- 
ing to  accept  his  self-imposed  alternative 
without  a  struggle.  But  the  fact  remains  that 
he  knew  nothing  about  playwriting,  nor  had 
he,  as  the  elder  theologians  would  say,  been 
"  called."  For  several  weeks  he  left  the  office 
early  and  returned  late  the  next  day.  And, 
in  the  course  of  time,  I  was  permitted  to  take 
into  my  hands  the  type-written  manuscript  (a 
second,  or  carbon  copy)  of  "  The  Davenports' 
Divorce."  It  combined,  I  was  calmly  in- 
formed, "  the  technique  of  Ibsen  with  the 
amusing  surface  detail  of  Fitch."  Such  a 
mixture  of  ingredients  manifestly  produced 
a  brew  which  could  not  fail  to  please  all 
palates.  And  this  erstwhile  modest  and  effi- 
cient reporter  began  to  dream  of  royalties,  and 
cultivated  the  automobile  editor. 

Alas!  "The  Davenports'  Divorce"  was 
never  tried  in  public.  It  was,  to  be  sure,  aired 
at  a  special  matinee,  when  its  utter  unfitness 


S52  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

for  the  stage  became  apparent  to  everybody 
except  the  author.  But  far  from  teaching  him 
the  obvious  lesson,  this  failure  but  fixed  him 
the  more  firmly  in  his  determination  to  be  a 
dramatist.  He  began  to  assume  the  role  of 
martyr.  With  a  persistence  and  fertility  of 
invention  worthy  of  a  defeated  golf  player  he 
would  explain  the  reasons  for  the  failure  of 
his  drama  to  anybody  who  would  listen.  And 
with  none  of  these  reasons  did  he  himself  have 
anything  to  do!  Meanwhile  he  set  about  the 
composition  of  a  second  masterpiece.  Happy 
and  hopeful,  he  has  been  "  putting  the  finish- 
ing touches  upon  it  "  for  the  past  three  years. 
And  he  still  cultivates  the  automobile  editor. 
But  it  is  by  no  means  necessary  to  have 
failed  as  a  playwright  in  order  to  lose  one's 
perspective  about  one's  self.  Success  works 
almost  as  surely,  and  much  more  quickly.  For 
it  will  be  noted  by  the  observant  theatregoer 
that  occasionally  a  play  does  succeed,  outside 
of  the  New  York  Herald.  The  poor,  despised 
critic,  looking  upon  a  successful  play  in  the 
theatre  and  searching  for  the  causes  of  its 
popularity,  usually  detects  them  in  its  truth  of 
characterization,  its  qualities  of  interest  and 
suspense  in  construction,  its  wit,  but  above  all 
in  its  sincerity.  It  is  never  easy  to  say  why 
one  play  seems  sincere,  another  insincere;  but 
it  is  never  possible  to  make  a  mistake.     Yet, 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  853 

quaintly,  the  playwright  too  often  seems  to 
neglect  this  element  of  sincerity  entirely  in  his 
calculations.  Let  him  "  put  one  over,"  to  em- 
ploy the  expressive  idiom  of  the  profession,  and 
the  chances  are  ten  to  one  that  he  will  think  the 
task  was  just  as  easy  as  you,  who  sit  out  front 
and  never  tried  to  write  a  play  (if  there  exists 
such  a  person!),  also  think  it.  He  will,  in  a 
serene  self-confidence  that  he  possesses  an  un- 
failing mathematical  formula  for  creating  effec- 
tive drama,  "  sign  up  "  a  contract  with  a  man- 
ager the  day  after  his  success  is  launched, 
agreeing  to  provide  in  the  next  three  days  the 
scenario  of  a  comedy  for  Miss  Blank,  and  to 
have  the  first  act  ready  for  rehearsal  in  three 
weeks. 

Of  course,  he  has  n't  a  real  idea  in  his  head 
for  a  comedy  for  Miss  Blank,  nor  perhaps  for 
anybody  else.  His  first  play  succeeded  because 
he  felt  strongly  the  humor  of  some  situation, 
or  was  filled  with  a  desire  to  express  the  indig- 
nation that  was  in  him  against  some  social 
wrong.  It  probably  succeeded  not  because  he 
was  a  genius,  but  because  the  Lord,  in  His 
infinite  if  inscrutable  wisdom,  selected  him  to 
be  the  mouthpiece  of  a  cause.  But  does  he 
realize  that?  No,  indeed!  Perhaps  for  Miss 
Blank's  *'  vehicle "  he  selects  a  situation  in 
which  he  does  not  feel  strongly  the  humor  at 
all,  but  fancies  Miss  Blank  would  play  it  effec- 


864.  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

tively;  or  perhaps  he  selects  a  social  evil  to 
attack  concerning  which  he  knows  little  and 
cares  less,  but  which  is  prominently  in  the 
papers  and  so  seems  a  "  timely  topic "  for 
drama.  One  attack  on  a  social  evil  succeeded, 
so  of  course  another  will.  But  in  spite  of  this 
lucid  reasoning  his  play  fails.  And  he  cannot 
understand  why.  It  is  curious  how  little  play- 
wrights appear  to  know,  sometimes,  about 
writing  plays. 

''  All  of  which  is  undoubtedly  true,"  said 
the  president,  at  a  recent  meeting  of  the  Un- 
conceited  Dramatists'  Club,  where  these  senti- 
ments were  expressed,  "  but  it  seems  to  be  an 
inevitable  result  of  present-day  dramatic  con- 
ditions. You  see,  the  production  of  plays  is 
regarded  as  a  trade,  not  an  art.  And  we  all 
know  that  the  egotism  of  tradespeople  is  su- 
perior to  all  other  brands.  A  real  artist  is 
comparatively  humble.  A  successful  stock- 
broker or  a  railroad  president  assumes  an 
attitude  of  inordinate  importance,  and  we 
Americans  take  him  at  his  own  valuation,  the 
way  the  French  took  Victor  Hugo.  The  most 
conceited  man  I  ever  knew  was  not  an  actor, 
nor  an  operatic  tenor,  nor  a  playwright.  He 
was  the  manufacturer  of  a  much-advertised 
brand  of  face  powder ;  and  the  next  most  con- 
ceited was  the  president  of  a  trust  company. 
Once  let  the  Tired  American  Business  Man  and 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  355 

his  weary  wife  regard  the  production  of  plays 
not  as  an  industry  to  manufacture  and  peddle 
pleasure,  but  as  a  fine  art,  and  they  '11  soon 
enough  reduce  us  to  humbleness !  " 

"  You  might  explain  that  a  little  more,"  said 
the  secretary-treasurer,  with  some  asperity. 
"  I  don't  consider  myself  a  tradesman." 

"  You  are,  though,"  said  the  president. 
"  You  are  nothing  else  —  a  tradesman  or  a 
skilled  mechanic,  as  you  choose.  What  are 
you  doing  right  now?  You  are  adapting  a 
French  farce  for  the  Tired  American  Business 
Man  and  a  few  thousand  dollars,  and  taking 
out  of  it,  in  obedience  to  Saxon  tradition, 
everything  which  made  it  interesting  to  a  sane 
intelligence.  Oh,  you  're  using  some  technical 
skill  in  the  process,  I  '11  admit !  But  you  're  an 
artisan,  not  an  artist ;  you  're  a  tradesman, 
not  a  creator." 

"  And  what  are  you  doing  '  right  now,'  I 
should  like  to  inquire?  "  snapped  the  secretary- 
treasurer. 

"  I  ?  "  said  the  president.  "  I  ?  I  am  writing 
a  *  comedy-drama  ' —  whatever  that  is  —  to  fit 
a  young  woman  who  pleases  the  public  and 
can't  act.  The  scenario  was  devised  by  her- 
self and  her  manager  on  an  automobile  ride, 
so  they  say.  Personally,  I  suspect  the  chauf- 
feur. This  scenario  does  n't  in  the  least  inter- 
est   me.     The    characters    are    all    animated 


S56  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

puppets,  there  is  no  inevitableness,  no  philoso- 
phy of  Hfe,  no  poetry,  no  passion,  no  truth,  no 
nature,  in  the  whole  inane  affair.  But  I'll  put 
in  some  smart  talk  —  steal  a  few  epigrams 
from  Congreve  or  Oscar  Wilde,  maybe  — 
stick  in  two  or  three  character  '  bits '  right  off 
Broadway,  slang  and  all,  to  make  it  seem  real 
to  the  provincial  New  York  audiences,  and  I  '11 
clean  up  $300  to  $500  a  week  for  the  next  two 
seasons.  I  Ve  got  $1,000  advance  royalties  in 
my  pocket  now.  That 's  good  trade,  is  n't  it? 
But  art —  your  grandmother !  " 

"  Exactly,"  said  the  vice-president,  who  as 
a  rule  is  the  silent  member  of  the  club,  "  but 
what  I  want  to  know  is,  why  is  there  anything 
in  that  to  get  conceited  about?  " 

''Hear,  hear!"  cried  the  dramatic  critic, 
causing  a  waiter  to  come  running  in  their 
direction. 

The  president  grew  grave,  and  spoke  slowly, 
after  a  consderable  pause.  "  Well,"  he  said  at 
last,  "  as  I  dope  it  out,  the  reason  is  n't  at  all 
the  one  most  commonly  assigned.  It  is  n't  at 
all  because  a  playwright  —  the  ephemeral  play- 
wright, like  us  chaps  here  —  lives  almost  as 
much  by  the  public  favor  as  the  actors  them- 
selves, even  if  his  name  is  in  much  smaller  type, 
measures  iiis  success  and  has  his  success  meas- 
ured for  him  on  all  sides,  not  by  his  truth 
to    nature,    but    by    box-office    receipts  —  that 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  357 

is,  by  public  recognition.  It  is  n't  because 
the  playwright  is  necessarily  a  part  of  this 
hectic,  egotistical  world  of  the  theatre.  The 
reason  is  just  what  I  intimated  a  while  back  — 
because  the  drama  for  most  of  us  is  a  trade, 
not  an  art.  The  reason  is  not  that  our  art  is 
judged  commercially,  but  that  our  art  is  n't 
art  at  all  but  a  trade  product.  Down  deep  in 
his  soul,  every  tradesman  knows  that  he  is 
an  inferior  being  to  the  real  artist,  the  creator 
of  ideal  forms.  Nobody  likes  to  feel,  even 
at  the  bottom  of  his  soul,  that  he  is  an  inferior 
being.  He  struggles  to  find  arguments  to  dis- 
prove his  conviction.  And  in  our  case  the 
world  provides  one  very  plausible  argument, 
and  stands  ready  to  help  us  hammer  it 
home  —  " 

"And  that  is?"  said  the  vice-president, 
when  the  speaker  broke  off. 

"  I  'm  trying  to  phrase  it,"  the  other  re- 
sumed, — "  and  that  is,  the  financial  success 
which  crowns  mediocrity.  A  true  artist  often 
—  not  always,  but  often  —  starves.  The  clever 
tradesman  in  drama  (or  music  or  pictures 
or  novels,  for  that  matter)  never  does.  Ideals 
command  much  less  a  price  than  inanities. 
We  can't  furnish  the  ideals,  but,  ah,  ha! 
we  can  get  the  price.  We  hug  it,  poor  de- 
lusion that  it  is,  to  our  bosoms;  we  bolster  up 
our  soul-pride  with  it.    My  God,  what  a  trade 


358  AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE 

standard  it  is !  But  sooner  or  later,  in  defense 
against  our  own  shame,  we  let  it  turn  us  into 
conceited  monkeys,  worthy  of  swinging  by  our 
prehensile  tails  in  the  stock  exchange !  " 

The  club  was  silent  for  a  space.  Then  the 
dramatic  critic  spoke.  "  I  seem  to  recall  sev- 
eral dramatists,  even  to-day,"  he  said,  "  W'ho 
are  rather  uncompromisingly  artists,  writing 
entirely  to  please  themselves  and  creating  ideal 
forms,  who  yet  enjoy  a  fair  measure  of  popular 
success.  One  of  them,  indeed,  enjoys  the  rare 
distinction,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  of  drawing 
twenty-five  per  cent  royalties,  that  canny  Scot, 
J.  iM.  Barrie.  Then  there  is  Mr.  Pinero,  and 
Mr.  Maeterlinck,  and  Mr.  Hauptmann,  and 
Mr.  Sudermann,  and  —  " 

"Hold  on  a  minute!"  cried  the  president. 
"  I  never  said  real  art  would  n't  succeed  in  the 
theatre.  It  always  will,  in  the  theatre  or  any- 
where else,  if  you  give  it  time.  And  these  men 
have  all  had  time.  But  we  've  got  vastly  more 
theatres  to  fill  than  we  've  got  real  artists  to 
write  for  them,  and  we  've  got  vastly  more 
people  to  amuse  than  are  capable  of  appre- 
ciating a  Barrie,  let  alone  a  Hauptmann.  It 's 
because  all  these  theatres  are  lumped  into 
one  collection  called  *  The  Theatre,'  and  all 
the  people  writing  for  them,  tradesmen  and 
artists,  are  lumped  indiscriminately  into  one 
class    called    playwrights,    that    the    trouble 


AT    THE    NEW    THEATRE  359 

comes.  When  you  line  up  Ibsen  with  George 
M.  Cohan,  what  is  there  left  for  Cohan  to  do 
but  to  point  to  his  pocketbook?  You've  got 
to  give  every  man  something  to  brag  about. 
That 's  what  makes  us  men." 

"  But  what  can  you  brag  about,  as  members 
of  the  Unconceited  Dramatists'  Club?"  asked 
the  critic. 

"  We  brag  about  that,"  said  the  president. 


THE   END 


u>i5v>;K8tTy  of  CAiAiinttniA 


"'m;v. 


mm 


BRARYfi 


% 


^       ^OfCAilFO^ 


I'sei  iMSi 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

305  De  Neve  Drive  -  Parking  Lot  17  •  Box  951388 

LOS  ANGELES,  CALIFORNIA  90095-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library  from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


!^ 


-J 


1   Op/T?' 


S  ^ 


dO 


4s^ 


^.OFCAllFOftfc,        MSSfCM.\m4^ 


IQ'JMfil/". 


.  -tUrilfJIVFKA 


L  007  228  441   7 


.a3AINa-3V\V 


AWEUNIVERy/> 


55MIIBRARYO/         <sMUBRA 


OFCAllFOfi',: 


>&Ab\ 


,^W[•UNIVER5•,- 


^TilJONYSOV 


.^v\f•UNlVER^' 


OFCAllFOff^s^, 


